Case Study: El Paso County Sheriff's Office

The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office has 280 sworn peace officers that oversee the 1,015 square miles of El Paso County and its 840,000 residents. Lieutenant Robert Rojas started working for the Sheriff’s Office in 2001 as a jailer and became a sworn peace officer in 2004. He then started working off-duty and, after building a robust network in the community and the LEA, moved to coordinating off-duty jobs.

The many moving parts of off duty

When Lieutenant Rojas started coordinating off-duty, the process was disorganized, slow and outdated with a lot of moving parts. Most of his challenges resulted from using inefficient tools and technology that weren’t robust enough to handle the level of communication and scheduling he needed to easily staff off-duty jobs.

In order to accommodate larger, more robust jobs (like staffing the Sun Bowl and other large events, which requires up to 80 officers on-site), Lieutenant Rojas needed to reach out to a vast network of officers. His biggest challenge was finding a solution that could handle multiple contacts for multiple jobs. He tried to use texting and messaging apps, but most of them had limitations. As a result, he was either sending out multiple texts, resorting to mass emails or switching between different messaging apps to find available officers.

Managing schedules proved difficult as well. Lieutenant Rojas manually updated a calendar to schedule and organize each deputy working off-duty details, including several shifts for each job and several shifts for each deputy.

Between juggling texts and calendars, Lieutenant Rojas was spending at least 2 hours a day coordinating off-duty. This work often carried over to his time off, where he was spending time coordinating jobs and being stressed about covering off-duty shifts.

Looking to technology for a better solution

Lieutenant Rojas is always open-minded to improvements in process and technology, even if it disrupts the status quo. “I think we should always be progressive,” he said.

Being a technology buff, when he discovered RollKall, he was immediately enthusiastic. As a result, making the transition to RollKall was fast and easy for him. However, there was a little hesitancy amongst officers at first. That hesitancy quickly subsided once everyone realized how easy it is to use the mobile app.

"It was hard for me to get everybody to understand how easy it was," he said. "Once they started using the app, it caught on like wildfire."

Lieutenant Rojas also enlisted another coordinator at the El Paso Sheriff’s Office to use RollKall, which eventually led to the entire office using RollKall for improved efficiency.

El Paso County saves significant time coordinating off-duty

After implementing RollKall, Lieutenant Rojas simply posts the available and upcoming jobs to the app every week at a specific day and time. When jobs are posted, they are often filled within minutes.

Lieutenant Rojas no longer has to send mass texts, hunt down emails and constantly juggle between different tools to manage an off-duty calendar. He estimates a 95% time savings coordinating off-duty jobs with RollKall.

His favorite feature is the ability to instantaneously connect with every officer in his network. “I can contact 180 officers in my agency in a split second,” Lieutenant Rojas said.

Additional but unanticipated benefits 

RollKall has also helped the coordinators cut back on correspondence time with the businesses they serve. When the business logs in to RollKall business portal, they can see who is scheduled for their detail, so there is less back and forth over whether or not a job has been scheduled and by whom.

“It really allows a lot of convenience and flexibility for the businesses too,” Lieutenant Rojas said

In addition to time savings and improved communication with officers, Lieutenant Rojas appreciates the fairness in assigning jobs. Fairness has always been top-of-mind for Lieutenant Rojas and making sure every deputy that wanted an off-duty had an equal opportunity. With RollKall, Lieutenant Rojas can ensure deputies have the same opportunity to apply for any job.

He has also seen a benefit from the GPS clock-in and clock-out, as well as the documentation of job details. Occasionally internal affairs will request information regarding a specific off-duty job. This previously required time searching for job details in multiple places, but now, all of the information is easily accessible and ready to pull up at any time.

Better communication has improved relationships

Another benefit Lieutenant Rojas didn’t expect was an improvement in relationships with officers, the business community and other agencies. “It has strengthened my relationship with officers, with agencies around us and with businesses,” he said. “We’ve always had good relationships but now we communicate on a different level.”

He has also increased officer participation to about 75% of the force as well as increased the number of off-duty jobs and requests that he is able to fill. With over 950 jobs per month to fill, Lieutenant Rojas is now able to schedule more off-duty while simultaneously dedicating more on-duty time to his area of expertise: criminal investigations.

El Paso County Sheriff’s Office was able to create a more efficient process, saving valuable time and minimizing the stress of coordinating off-duty with RollKall. While improving processes to save time was a motivating factor for Lieutenant Rojas to start using RollKall, added benefits include fairness, transparency and improved community and officer relationships.