About Gallup PD
Gallup, NM is unique in that it sees a large number of weekend crowds from its neighboring rural communities.
We interviewed Detective Jon Whitsitt to hear how they are overcoming these unique challenges.
Interview Highlights: Challenges Gallup Faced
What are some of the challenges unique to your department?
We receive funding based on our population - 25,000 people - but that doesn't account for the massive influx we experience on the weekends. Due to Gallup's developed commercial areas, residents of the surrounding rural cities regularly commute there for banking, healthcare, and shopping needs. This means our officers need to work both smarter and harder and learn to do more with fewer resources.
“PowerDMS has allowed us to save quite a bit of money and made us more efficient. It’s a win-win situation.”
Jon Whitsitt - Detective, Gallup NM Police Department
What was your process like before PowerDMS?
Before PowerDMS, everything was done on paper. Our 50 officers were each responsible for a 420-page standard operating procedure binder. Whenever a policy was updated, it would be disseminated via paper, and it was the officers’ responsibility to update it in their binders. What ended up happening was officers wouldn’t actually replace the old policy, but put the new policy in the front sleeve of the binder. This inevitably led to officers referencing outdated policies, and misplacing physical policy revisions.
How has PowerDMS improved your policy management processes?
All of our SOPs and forms are kept safe in a single place, so there’s no risk of losing or referencing old policies. Our officers can access critical content at any moment and it’s very cost effective compared to the money and resources we spent on our previous process. The officers love how easy the platform is to use and how they don’t need to dig through boxes or binders to find what they need.