REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL
December 15, 2016
FROM: JERRY P. DYER, Chief of Police
Police Department
BY: LYDIA CARRASCO, Deputy Chief
Police Department - Patrol Division
SUBJECT
Title
Award a sole source service contract in the amount of $132,000 over five years to West Corporation, a Delaware corporation, for Beware(r) browser-based software to extract information from public and commercial sources applicable to 9-1-1 calls, providing law enforcement with location-based, incident-related information (Citywide)
Body
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that Council authorize the Chief of Police to award a contract to West Corporation in the amount of $132,000 over five years to provide browser-based software enabling the Police Department to extract data from public and commercial sources applicable to 9-1-1 calls.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The use of public and commercial records in public safety began in the mid-nineties, and has become an accepted and established practice. Most services that aggregate and provide this information are primarily designed to provide information relative to a name, as opposed to a location, and return vast amounts of information in pages-long formats. Such name-based services are very useful for follow-up investigators with time to pore over all of the information, but not for the first responder needing pertinent information quickly. West's Beware(r) software quickly provides information for first responders based on the location of the incident to which they're responding. This information provides them with increased situational awareness to guide their response strategy, which can lead to safer outcomes.
BACKGROUND
Beware(r) searches and compiles commercial and public data associated with the address of an emergency event in progress from thousands of data sources. From this information, Beware(r) identifies people associated with an address; delivering a summary on each within a matter of seconds. Bew...
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