POLICING technology developed in Scotland that can free up officers for on-the-job beat work is set to be rolled out to law enforcement agencies across the world.
The Pronto technology that allows officers to record and send back information on an android phone saving each officer up to two hours a day in administration was developed in Glasgow and is now to be marketed in Europe and the US after Police Scotland became the latest to take up the software.
Motorola Solutions, part of the US-based global radio company, now owns Pronto, which was originally developed in collaboration with police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service as part of a project with the University of Glasgow.
Andrew Sinclair, Motorola Solutions’ Seattle-based corporate vice president and general manager, said the firm’s Glasgow base, and its Edinburgh arm, the recently acquired body-camera maker Edesix are expecting to increase the joint workforce of around 200 under the growth plans, after already upping the staff by 10 per cent in the last year.
Mr Sinclair, above, said: “We’ll see that accelerating, particularly as we start to integrate those products together.
“Pronto came out of Glasgow University and through various acquisitions ended up being part of Motorola Solutions.
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He said: “Then recently we acquired Edesix, who are one of the leading body worn camera makers in the UK.
“Motorola Solutions now has critical mass in Scotland and we’re looking to expand and build on those successes.”
Pronto is replacing police officers’ traditional paper notebooks and other documentation they currently carry.
About 50,000 officers across the UK will be using the technology to directly fill in reports on their mobile devices for incidents such as crimes, road collisions and traffic tickets, as well as record witness statements, then automatically submit them without having to go back to the station.
Mr Sinclair said: “Police Scotland are estimating about one to two hours savings a day, per officer, because they’re getting away from what we would call ‘yo-yo policing.”
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Mr Sinclair continued: “The software division of Motorola Solutions, which is what I run, really is the only company that has that end to end workflow for public safety.
“So everything from emergency call-taking, so 999 taking through computer-aided dispatch. Computer-aided dispatch is the person on the other end of the radio, the police officer when they’re coming into a situation who is helping manage that, provide them situational awareness.”
He said: “Motorola Solutions is a 90-year-old company.
“The name Motorola comes from the fact that we were the first company to put a radio into a police car. Obviously, over the years it grew into a large corporation.
“We put the first radio on the Moon with the Moon Landing, and all those sort of things. Most people when they think of Motorola, think of flip phones."
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He said: "That part of the company was actually spun off a number of years ago, and Motorola really returned to its roots in public safety. The next big thing that will happen is you’ll see Pronto gain and start to roll out globally but we’ll also see some of the more advanced technology start to benefit policing, and you’ll see machine learning and AI starting to show up.”
He added: “We’re taking this technology and introducing it into the rest of Europe and the US. Which, as somebody who covers technology, is kind of the reverse of what you normally see.
“There’s normally stuff coming out of Silicon Valley and going global. The ingenuity coming out of Glasgow, and Edinburgh, with Edesix as well, is really now going global. We have policing advances that are being made here that we’ll now be delivering to the rest of the world.”
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