The NYPD’s new smartphone program has helped officers respond to crimes in progress about a minute quicker than they were able to this time last year, a data official for the department said Thursday evening.
Jessica Tisch, the Department’s Deputy Commissioner of Information Technology, said that the devices — equipped with a specialized 911 app — are at least partially responsible for a 12 percent dip in response times, compared with the first three months of last year.
“The 911 taker will take the call, he or she will type the information into our system and instead of waiting for the information to go out over dispatch, over police radio, it will go direct to the smartphones of our officers in the area, and what we’ve seen is a corresponding reduction in response times,” Tisch told Errol Lewis on NY1’s “Inside City Hall.”
The NYPD finished rolling out these specialized smart phones to its officers this past week, she said.