Metro Vancouver Transit Police

 

Scheduling for a Beat Police Department

Metro Vancouver Transit Police (MVTP) is the only transit police service in Canada. Its jurisdiction spans over 144 kms of rail, 63 stations, 1,500+ buses, 200 bus routes, and a passenger ferry route. As a beat police department, mobile communication is an integral part of daily operations. In 2016, the MVTP began looking for an all-in-one scheduling solution that would improve mobile communication, manage overtime and special events, and enhance its subpoena process.

Case Study: Metro Vancouver Transit Police & InTime – Event Planning & Mobile Communication

The Metro Vancouver Transit Police’s Past Challenges

LACK OF OVERSIGHT

MVTP was using several disparate systems to manage scheduling, court and extra-duty. This made it difficult to manage officer fatigue, court conflicts and have a grasp of the bigger picture.

HIGH OVERTIME DEMAND

MVTP had to manually callout their officers to fill overtime or an event assignment. In addition, it was difficult to spread out OT according to their collective agreement.

MANUAL SUBPOENA MANAGEMENT

Subpoenas would come from court in the mail and had to be manually entered into a system. Notifications of changes to court appearances often never made it to the officer in time.

LACK OF MOBILE COMMUNICATION

As a beat police department, MVTP are always on foot. They need to be able to receive notifications on the go. If court was cancelled or trailed, there often was a delay in the notification causing unnecessary overtime.

How did Metro Vancouver Transit Police do it?

We talk with Inspector CJ Kyle, Sgt. Daffydd Hermann and Staff Sgt. Dexter Huber at Metro Vancouver Transit Police about how they managed to streamline their scheduling, subpoena and overtime process.

CENTRALIZED SYSTEM

Previously using multiple systems to manage scheduling, special events and court was inefficient and resulted in a lack of departmental oversight. Sgt. Daffydd Hermann explains, “Understanding officer fatigue for example, we didn’t previously know when they were working, what court commitments they had and we didn’t have a good handle on the bigger picture. InTime has helped us to coordinate all those things, bring all that information into one place and help us make the best deployment decisions possible.”

FROM 2 HOURS/DAY TO 5 MINUTES A DAY

“The biggest improvement for us is the reduced administrative time that our supervisors have to spend in the office doing scheduling. The schedule is pretty automated, transfers are taken care of, people show up on the schedule on a particular date and if we know a transfer is happening to another unit 3 months down the road, we can set that up as soon as we know about it.”

ELECTRONIC SUBPOENA MANAGEMENT

Inspector CJ Kyle explains the change since implementing InTime, “The subpoenas came from court, they came in the mail, we then had to manually put them into a system. We had many different systems that didn’t work together. Now, we get those subpoenas electronically from the court, we’re able to streamline them through InTime straight into the officer’s schedule. If we have notifications or de-notifications of court, we’re able to do that much more quickly and efficiently.”

IMPROVED MOBILE COMMUNICATION

“In Metro Vancouver Transit Police, we are a beat police department; we are on foot. We are not in cars, we are not attached to computers, as is the case for many other police agencies. So, we have the flexibility now to have the InTime [Scheduling] App on our phones and to be mobile. We’re able to share information much more effectively now and to get information in real-time. The technical and digital world is something that policing really needs to start embracing.”

IMPROVED OVERTIME & EVENT MANAGEMENT

MVTP has a high demand on overtime and event management. Instead of manually calling employees to fill OT, they now can schedule an overtime callout and have them sign up electronically. MVTP set the rules in InTime according to their collective agreement and the system makes recommendations on the officers who should be working those shifts. This is based on their qualifications and how many overtime hours they have worked; if they worked recently or if they have to work shortly after that overtime callout. Then they can either manually select them or let the system do it all by itself.