eFORCE®

The Edgewood Police Department provides community oriented based policing to approximately2,500 residents with a total land area of approximately 2 square miles.  The agency has 12 full-time officers and provides 24/7 full law enforcement services to their citizens.  The City of Edgewood is located approximately 2 miles south of downtown Orlando and is bordered by the City of Orlando to the north, City of Belle Isle to the south, and unincorporated Orange County to the west and east, coincidentally the area in unincorporated Orange County is one of the highest calls for service areas in their jurisdiction.  State Route 527 (Orange Avenue) passes directly through the City bringing with it an average of more than 43,000 vehicles per day.  The City contracts with the Orange County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office for dispatching services.

Sergeant Jackson and Scott realized that finding the right RMS for their agency was the key to their future success.  They approached the project of finding a new RMS, realizing that whatever motion they put in place and started with would most likely continue well beyond their years with the agency.  Several requirements were put into place by both Sergeant Jackson and Scott.  Sergeant Jackson has served the Edgewood Police Department for 23 years, during that time he has become responsible for UCR reporting and all aspects of data and report generation for the EPD and City reporting needs.  The old RMS system had limitations, but thanks to its open architecture, Sergeant Jackson was able to utilize Microsoft Excel to harvest the needed data and generate reports even though it was time-consuming.

By virtue of the past, their vision for the future required a robust reporting package as the top requirement.  Beyond that, easy of data entry, report generation, and training were many items on Sergeant Jackson’s laundry list.  As IT Manager, Scott had several other requirements.  Having spent many years in the hospitality industry and software industry, he realized that “software as a service” was the trend of the future.  The City was not interested in hosting yet another server and managing the configuration issues and constant maintenance headache coupled with security issues.

As Sergeant Jackson and Scott proceeded through the maze and minefield of the RMS selection process they began to compile their list of qualified candidates. eFORCE® made it to the short list.  As the selection process continued, the detailed list of wants and needs continued to evolve.  “We were very impressed with the eFORCE® team, there didn’t seem to be topics they shied away from.  They were able to manage all of our requests and find a proper solution to keep their RMS product at the top of our short list.” said Sgt. Jackson.

“Picking eFORCE® as our final choice was easy” said Scott.  “The team at eFORCE® worked very hard to earn our business and draft a proper plan of attack for implementing our requests and managing our expectations.”     One of the key factors in selecting eFORCE® as the final choice was that eFORCE® committed to developing an integration to Orange County (Florida) Corrections ICJIS system which houses all the arrest/charging affidavit information that the officers use when making an arrest. 

In July 2010, the Edgewood Police Department went live with eFORCE® in a hosted solution.  Training took place at their office and it was immediately pressed into use.  Officers and administrative staff had very positive feedback and very few problems getting adjusted to the system.  In October 2010, the eFORCE® staff turned on the interface to the Orange County (Florida) ICJIS system and it was successful.  In January 2011, the Edgewood Police Department went live with Florida TraCS for crash reporting.  The team at eFORCE® created an interface for TraCS to upload crash data into eForce eliminating the need for re-entry by support staff. 

“To date eFORCE® has been a pleasure to work with.  Their can-do attitude is a very welcome addition and the efficiencies gained by elimination of re-keying data is paramount” says, Scott.  But don’t think they are done yet, Sergeant. Jackson and Scott continue to look towards the future and envision how best to leverage their software to maximize their return and the team at eFORCE® will be ready to respond.

If you’d like to contact Sergeant Jackson or Scott they can be reached via email at vjackson@edgewood-fl.gov or szane@edgewood-fl.gov.