New Texting Service Available for Public, Boulder Police Department

PowerEnagge texting service launched to better connect with community

The Boulder Police Department launched a new texting service Dec. 11 to better connect with the community members it serves.

The new community member satisfaction and feedback solution—called PowerEngage—uses text messaging to offer notifications and a feedback survey option to community members who have interacted with Boulder police after a 911 call.

Individuals who do not want to participate can simply not respond. Alternatively, individuals may reply with STOP and that will opt them out of all future text surveys from the department.

“It’s been a good tool for us to get kind of more real time feedback from the people that call us because it sends it out about six hours after a call, so they still have it fresh in their mind and give us some good feedback, and a lot of it has been positive,” said Police Communications Manager Brad Riggin who oversees the Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center.”

The Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center answers 911, non-emergency, and administrative phone lines and dispatches several resources including police, fire, EMS, Animal Protection, Open Space Mountain Parks Rangers, and others for the City of Boulder.

Deputy Chief of Support Services Ron Gosage said this new service aligns with their department’s Reimagine Policing Plan and their continued commitment to transparency and respect in policing.

“We’re thrilled about this new way to learn more from our community members in nearly real time,” he said. “Much like private companies send automatic text message notifications and satisfaction surveys to their customers, Boulder Police is now able to do the same. We expect that this new solution, PowerEngage, will improve communication between the police and our community, and provide an important service to people we serve.”

Riggin said informative text message notifications will be sent to some 911 callers immediately following their 911 call, such as following a minor traffic accident where traffic isn’t blocked, and nobody is injured. A person who calls 911 in this case might receive a text message telling them an officer is on the way, and to please stay out of traffic and have their driver’s license, insurance, and registration ready.

PowerEngage will also send text message feedback surveys six hours after an initial 911 call, with quiet hours between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. This text will invite community members to take a quick survey about their experience during their call for service and the response they received. The survey will provide the community member with the opportunity to provide comments, feedback, or to thank the responding officer.

“It’s (survey) is really simple,” Riggin said. “Four questions are asked. Two are about the 911 call taker and then two about the responder that they had experience with. It’s interfaced with our computer-aided dispatch system and it pulls that phone number that the calls in on and then the system will automatically text message with the survey a couple of hours after their call. There are quiet hours built into it, so we’re not disturbing people at night. We do not send those out to any life-threatening calls that might add trauma to an already traumatic experience.”

PowerEngage is an additional effort to promote transparency and good communication in policing and to provide excellent service to the community. Several other Colorado police departments already use PowerEngage, including police agencies in Golden, Castle Rock, and Lakewood. The surveys inviting feedback are in addition to, and will not replace, the Boulder Police Department’s forum to receive commendations and complaints, which are submitted to the Professional Standards Unit via our website at https://bouldercolorado.gov/services/police-commendations-and-complaints

“Other agencies do use this. The University of Colorado Police Department uses it as well and Boulder County Sheriff’s Office is going to use it,” Riggin said. It’s kind of built into our Re-Imagined policing plan that our chief put out earlier this year. We’re trying to get as much feedback from the community as we can on our performance and how we’re doing, and then adjust as we can.”

Riggin said the PowerEngage program will be evaluated in the coming months to see what is working.

“We haven’t had that evaluation phase yet. We do have those kind of milestones and meetings set up to look at it in the future, but right now, just collecting the data at this point,” he said. “We will be evaluating the first batch of data and see how things are going.”

Riggin said Boulder 911 dispatchers are an important lifeline to the community, and training is a part of that.

The Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center’s training program has been certified by the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, the largest organization for public safety communication professionals, according to Boulder police spokeswoman Dionne Waugh.

The Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center is now nationally certified for its dispatcher training program.

Joining just 90 communications centers across the U.S. and Canada, Boulder’s communications center training program has been awarded certification through the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials’ (APCO) Agency Training Program Certification program. APCO is the world’s largest organization of public safety communications professionals. It serves the needs of public safety communications practitioners worldwide—and the welfare of the general public as a whole—by providing complete expertise, professional development, technical assistance, advocacy, and outreach.

“This validation serves as an expression of what we’ve known for a long time,” Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold said. “We have exceptional people doing excellent work in our communications center and we’re incredibly proud of this recognition. We appreciate all the great work our dispatchers do.”

APCO P33 Certification is a certification program that provides a way for public safety agencies to certify that their training programs meet APCO American National Standards (ANS). The certification ensures that an agency’s curriculum, training materials, and supporting documentation are reviewed and checked for compliance. The certification adds value to communications agencies who partake in both C.A.L.E.A. and APCO programs.

“One of the many reasons we did this is because the State of Colorado does not have any training standards for 911 dispatchers,” Riggin said. “This certification ensures we are meeting APCO training standards and if the State of Colorado moves towards required training standards for 911 dispatchers, our center will likely already meet or exceed them.”