Safer, Smarter, Better: A Day In The Life Of A Law Enforcement Officer

Connecting Content & Technology to Improve Safety and Performance

When it comes to providing the right information at the right time, few industries are as critical as law enforcement. Even outside of the high-stakes situations that law enforcement officers find themselves in as they protect our communities, law enforcement agencies need to maintain operational readiness and maximize productivity to be successful in their mission. That said, law enforcement agencies are not like every other industry and there are variations and nuances even between departments. 

At Vector Solutions, we have seen firsthand how important customized solutions are to training and operations management for critical industries, like law enforcement, versus a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s why over 21,000 public safety agencies use Vector Solutions to manage training, compliance, operations, and workforce management. To help illustrate how our intelligent, world-class solutions help empower law enforcement agencies to make safer, smarter, and better decisions, we’re following along with a fictional law enforcement officer for this edition of our Safer, Smarter, Better series. 

A Day In The Life of a Law Enforcement Officer with Vector Solutions

Here’s a day in the life of a law enforcement officer, Dan, and how Vector Solutions’ customizable law enforcement solutions empower him and his department by enhancing safety practices and performance while protecting resources. 

8 am

Dan arrives for his 12-hour shift and immediately gets started on his first task of the day: his weekly equipment check. He uses Vector Check It, our innovative operations management solution that streamlines the process of routine inspections and maintenance for equipment, vehicles, and gear. Rather than outdated desktop systems (or worse, paper and pen!) Vector Check It is a mobile application, so Dan can access it directly from his phone or tablet. This allows him to finalize his equipment inspection anytime, anywhere as well as receive maintenance alerts and updated information in real-time. 

Every department is different, so Dan’s agency has created a customized vehicle inspection checklist as well as a customized supply checklist that reflects everyday high-dollar items, like Kevlar vests, electronic weapons, laptops, and more. The visual inventory feature of Vector Check It allows Dan and his supervisors to easily and accurately track, account for, modify and renew needed supplies while monitoring cost and quantities. Visual tools help make a detailed and sometimes complex process simple and efficient.

Vector Check It is trusted by law enforcement agencies for:

• At-a-glance visual of all items requiring repair, the repair costs and status and when they’re back in service.
• At-a-glance visual of all items requiring repair, the repair costs and status and when they’re back in service.
• Ensuring that equipment, vital officer gear, and vehicles are serviced regularly, in compliance, and functioning properly.
• Utilizing the intuitive workflow to track the status of your inventory and easily document related information such as costs, assignees and service receipts.

10 am

Dan is assigned to patrol a nearby neighborhood and heads out in his car. Just as he is pulling into the neighborhood, he receives a call that there’s been a bad traffic accident and he responds to the call to help stage the scene with fire rescue. Things change fast in Dan’s line of work and he has to be ready for a broad variety of situations. Luckily, his department invested in his training with Vector LMS & Training, our comprehensive learning management system that provides dynamic online training, policy management tools, and a total FTO program solution. With more than 250 hours of accredited online training, Dan’s department can better ensure their officers are ready to handle the complex challenges facing law enforcement officers and agencies today, including De-escalation, Physiological Response to Stress, Core Competencies of Leadership, Police Officer Liability, The Art of Effective Communication, Use of Force and more. Having recently completed driver training as well as refreshing his skills for staging a highway car accident, Dan can help his fellow law enforcement officers and fire rescue create a safe scene in which to work. 

Vector LMS & Training is trusted across critical industries for its robust features including:

• Improving safety and policy compliance with training courses curated by industry, and policy acknowledgement history, all in one place. 
• Customizing skill sheets, recording daily observation reports, and producing detailed reports to manage officers’ performance and growth over time.
• Using cutting edge technology and high-quality media like 3D, video, scenario-based courses, and mixed media to help law enforcement officers learn effectively.
• Combining the power of pre-built and custom course authoring for your department’s needs.
• Tracking employee required training completion and identifying skill gaps to assign courses to the officers who need them.
• Setting up and managing annual training calendars and assigning updated courses in real-time.
• Receiving and analyzing reports on training progress, completions, and results to optimize the effectiveness of your training offering, improve your organization’s performance, and reduce risk.

1 pm

Once he’s no longer needed on-scene, Dan reports to the training center for an assigned in-field officer training. Once at the training center, Dan and a few other officers run through scenarios for an active shooter simulation. During the simulation, the Training Officer records video of each officer to review with them, helping them to improve their tactics and techniques. The Training Officer uses Vector Solutions’ FTO application, Vector Evaluations+, to document their progress through the training and identify skill gaps. Afterwards, her observation and assessment reports will be recorded in the Vector LMS training platform so that each officer’s training documentation is available for supervisors. This information allows them to better identify where improvements are needed along with having easy access to a record that helps them determine each officer’s proficiency and fit for duty.

More benefits of Vector Evaluations+ include:

• Less admin time and more training time.
• Better skill mastery and better data for competency analysis.
• Better documentation and liability safeguards.
• Easy to set-up and easy to use.
• Instructor and trainee alignment.
• Robust library of pre-built and customizable FTO forms.
• Instructor and trainee alignment.

5pm

Having successfully completed his training, Dan heads back out to his patrol car. Because his car had been damaged recently, it's in the shop and he’s using a loaner car. He checks the progress of the work order within Vector Check It and sees his car is repaired, so he heads that way to pick it up before heading back to patrol his usual neighborhood to finish out his shift.

During downtime on his patrol, Dan browses Vector Scheduling for an available shift swap to work around his kid’s sporting event. Vector Scheduling is designed to streamline staffing for mission-critical workforces. Officers see a personalized dashboard in their mobile apps or online. He submits the shift swap request and one of the other patrol officers accepts so he can let his wife know that he’ll be able to make the game. He also sees an open shift request for the Crisis Intervention Team that responds to incidents involving mental illness, but needs to complete the required training before being eligible to be considered for the shift. He submits his request to take the training and is assigned the required online course through the LMS training platform to complete to be eligible for the shift. 

Vector Scheduling streamlines staffing for officers and supervisors with features that: 

• Manage schedules on-the fly by checking shifts, requesting time off, and trading shifts.
• Simplify shift needs and overtime hiring with intelligent rules that assign the right staff to the right assignments.
• Define limits, buffers, and rest periods to ensure compliance with union, labor, or other regulatory mandates as well as fatigue trackers to prevent burnout.
• Gain insights into staff schedules and identify trends and organizational needs.
• Eliminate the phone tree by using mass calls, texts, and push notifications that can inform an entire department in seconds.
• Reduce administrative time.

The Ultimate Law Enforcement Solutions are Here

When you have the right tools, content, and technology, you are empowered to deliver the information your law enforcement officers need, when they need it. From the day-to-day challenges of staffing, asset management, and training, to more complex issues like maintaining adequate coverage and effective training for complex scenarios, every solution your employees interact with should be designed with their safety in mind. At Vector Solutions, we don’t always know what challenges lay ahead, but we can put systems and solutions in place to help our customers and communities respond optimally when the time comes.