Irving PD Sees Significant Time Savings and Increased Visibility in Off-Duty Process
Irving Police Department and its 410 sworn peace officers serve a diverse community of 256,000 located in the DFW metroplex. Irving, Texas was known for Texas Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys for almost 40 years. While the Dallas Cowboys no longer play in Irving, the city of Irving is still home to event and music venues serving the entire DFW community.
Sergeant Joe Seaton has been with Irving PD for 33 years, the entirety of his career, and manages all police activities around special events in the city, from permitting to coordinating the off-duty security details.
A Tedious and Fragmented Off-Duty Process
Before RollKall, Sergeant Seaton was managing the special event details using an off-duty officer site. The tool was primarily a job-builder, offering no way for officers to access the jobs or sign up to work. As a result, Sergeant Seaton still had to copy and paste the details of every job into a word document and email them out to the officers. Jobs also couldn’t be duplicated, requiring him to re-enter the details of recurring jobs every time. It was a tedious process, taking a few hours to build the job and then a few days to notify officers and get the job staffed.
Visibility was also a concern. While Sergeant Seaton handled all city special events, the department had other coordinators managing their own off-duty details with community businesses. The department had little insight into those jobs with little transparency, yielding a fragmented and inconsistent process department-wide.
“Ultimately the chief of police is responsible for the off-duty officers working out in the city,” he said. “It was difficult to keep up with.”
Finding a Better Solution in Their Own Backyard
Coordinating special events had become so problematic Sergeant Seaton began to look for a better way to streamline the process. He started his search as many do: online. Through his research, he discovered RollKall and was thrilled to learn it was headquartered in their own backyard.
“When we realized RollKall was right here in the city of Irving we knew that those relationships in close proximity would be valuable to us.”
In comparing different solutions and formats, Sergeant Seaton was also quickly impressed by RollKall’s capabilities.
“When we looked at the product, it was hands-over a high-quality system that we needed and wanted to fit the needs of the City of Irving,” he said.
Transitioning to RollKall was Easier than Expected
Moving from their old system to RollKall was a relatively easy process. In partnership with the RollKall onboarding team, Irving PD held several meetings and distributed training materials and videos ahead of time to help everyone get on board department-wide. Due to the prep work done between both Irving PD and RollKall, the department was able to hit the ground running on day one posting and filling jobs.
While there was initially a little resistance to the change in the department, several officers were immediately enthusiastic.
“Our newer generation thought it was the best thing that ever happened, they loved it from day one,” Sergeant Seaton said.
RollKall Makes Off-Duty Easy and Provides Transparency for Irving PD
Irving PD has seen a huge positive impact on their off-duty program in the two years they have been using RollKall. To start, Sergeant Seaton has taken scheduling from a days-long process down to minutes. Building and posting a job now takes about 15 minutes, and officers sign up for the jobs almost immediately.
“Getting into technology that allowed us to rapidly create a job and post the job immediately and start filling jobs literally on the spot was a total game-changer for us.”
Any initial resistance to making the switch was quickly abated once everyone got used to the system and realized how much easier it was. The easier process for the officers has spurred benefits as well. The number of officers actively working off-duty has since grown from 200 to about 320 - that’s more than 75% of the whole department.
Visibility into every off-duty detail has also been a major improvement. The process is consistent and streamlined department-wide, and Irving PD has insight into any given job. “Now I know exactly which officers are working and where they’re working,” Sergeant Seaton said.
The biggest improvement for Sergeant Seaton has been saving time. Since he also handles the permitting for special events, he now has the time to focus on more important things like coordinating public safety and the safety of officers at large-scale events.
“I think [RollKall] is the way of the future and we’re only going to get better,” he says. “I highly recommend anyone who is considering it to absolutely sign up and make it a game-changer for you the way it did for us.”