Article Highlights
- The problem: The negative national narrative of law enforcement
- The solution: A community engagement platform to elevate the positive reality
- The benefits of improved police community engagement
The problem: Negative national narrative
In recent years, the national narrative on law enforcement has had a negative impact on local communities where citizens and police have a much more positive relationship.
Without a way to record and quantify the overwhelmingly positive law enforcement and community relations, departments are left to deal with the fallout of negative narratives on the news — reduced community engagement, eroded trust between citizens and officers, and low officer morale.
If citizens only hear negative news and can’t see law enforcement in their area working to improve citizen interactions, they may begin to lose confidence in their local police department. A once-positive relationship could start to turn sour as the lack of police community engagement reinforces national mistrust on the local level, leading to an increase in negative interactions with officers.
Similarly, when officers only hear bad news and never receive positive feedback from the citizens they serve, they feel unappreciated and officer morale drastically decreases. Low morale is not only a threat to officer motivation and retention, but also to officer wellbeing and mental health. Officers may wonder if it’s still worth putting their lives at risk every day if their community doesn’t appreciate them or the work they do.
The solution: A community engagement platform
In this situation, your department needs a solution that shines a light on the positive reality between citizens and police in your local community.
PowerEngage by PowerDMS is a citizen engagement software solution that automates proactive communication and feedback between law enforcement and citizens. It effectively and clearly measures the satisfaction of the citizens who recently interacted with your department through a police citizen satisfaction survey and Citizen Positive Satisfaction Score (CPSS). PowerEngage sends positive feedback to your officers to boost morale and produces useful reports to illustrate community perception trends.
Engage citizens with automated text surveys
In today’s world, convenience is incredibly important. While many feedback collection options send citizens a link to complete their survey, PowerEngage completes its brief, effective survey entirely through text. Because of this, the platform’s survey response rate is 5 times the average at over 50%. Citizens are selected for these police-community interaction surveys based on integrated CAD and RMS data. The text surveys are then automatically sent to callers, victims, witnesses, and others chosen after an interaction with your department so you receive relevant feedback on how citizens feel about the service you provide.
Track your Citizen Positive Satisfaction Score (CPSS)
In addition to collecting raw data, our community engagement platform also calculates a Citizen Positive Satisfaction Score (CPSS) to quantify local perception of your department. PowerEngage tracks this number over time to identify satisfaction trends, using the aggregated data from police citizen satisfaction surveys to illustrate the positive relationship your department has with the local community.
Boost morale with positive feedback
PowerEngage delivers positive feedback and accolades from the police-community interaction surveys directly to your officers’ emails on a weekly basis, which you can also display on a big screen in the department for all to see. Sharing commendations in real-time – both publicly and directly to officers — helps boost morale and reinforce positive interactions with your community.
The benefits of police community engagement
With citizen engagement software, you can balance the negative national narrative with the positive reality in your local community. PowerEngage gives your department the ability to highlight and elevate the positive voices that often go unheard, boosting officer morale and reinforcing positive interactions with police.
Implementing a community engagement platform that collects feedback from citizens also helps generate more trust from your community. This drives a positive narrative around local law enforcement and builds rapport with the people you serve on a daily basis.
Learn more about citizen engagement software
Want to find out more about how to improve community engagement and balance the narrative in your local community?
Schedule a demo today for an inside look at the PowerEngage community engagement platform and to discuss next steps.