2023 OACP Excellence in Information Technology Services Award

The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police is the voice of Ontario’s Police Leaders.  

Members of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police serve their communities as senior police leaders in municipal, regional, provincial, national, and First Nations police services across Ontario.

Media Release

Detective Constable Shaun Hildebrand, Toronto Police Service & Detective Sergeant Rob Williamson, Durham Regional Police Service Awarded the 2023 OACP Excellence in Information Technology Services Award

For Immediate Release: June 13, 2023

(Kingston, ON) – The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) is pleased to announce that Detective Constable Shaun Hildebrand of the Toronto Police Service (TPS) and Detective Sergeant Rob Williamson of the Durham Regional Police Service (DRPS) are the recipients of the 2023 OACP Excellence in Information Technology Services Award.

This award is presented in recognition of the accomplishments of police agencies who have used/leveraged technology in the development and introduction of a significant change that proved to be “a game-changer” for the organization and/or the policing community.

In response to the changing landscape of policing, the Toronto Police Service developed a research and development project in 2019 to create a police-centric suite of proactive policing tools. Leveraging state of the art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and integrating police records management systems, a complement of situational awareness tools were created:

• Provincial Offenders Dashboard – a live application that tracks firearm and gang related offenders on bail, allowing police agencies to share real-time violent offender data across all jurisdictions Province-wide.

• Pushpin – a digital bulletin board for wanted offenders, officer safety alerts, missing persons, and persons to be identified for outstanding crimes. While officers upload their geospatial information, Pushpin bulletins are delivered to the officer’s mobile workstations and cell phones, creating real-time situational awareness, increasing officer and public safety.

• Interactive Crime Map – an application that overlays offenders on bail and persons to be identified in proximity to where shootings, robberies, sexual assaults and other major crimes have occurred.

In 2021, TPS project lead D/Cst. Hildebrand approached D/Sgt. Williamson to share the technology developed by his service, leading to a collaboration between the two neighboring police organizations. Recognizing that criminals use the jurisdictional geographic barriers to their advantage, a plan was established to create a real-time information sharing platform.

The goal was to create a technological foundation and roadmap available for use by all law enforcement to break down geographic barriers, to share information inter-agency in real time, to increase public and officer safety, and to provide officers with location-based information while on patrol or involved in active investigations.

In 2021, TPS provided DRPS with access to its Provincial Offenders Dashboard. DRPS leveraged this technology to create their own internal Provincial Offenders Dashboard, and in 2022, the two systems were integrated allowing real time information sharing of firearms offenders on bail accessible by all DRPS and TPS members.

Through the shared Provincial Offenders Dashboard, both services were able to share and display each other’s bail offender information on internal dashboards. To date, there are approximately 1,600 firearm bail offenders displayed on the dashboard released on bail throughout Ontario and across Canada.

This innovative and the first of its kind in Canada approach breaks down geographic barriers, fosters a collaborative approach to policing across jurisdictions, and ultimately led to increased officer and community safety. It has provided frontline officers access to real time situational awareness, enabling them to make data driven decisions and assisting in effective and objective resource allocation in addressing bail compliance and recidivism.

This annual award is made possible by the generous support from Magnet Forensics.

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Media Contact:

José Luís (Joe) Couto

Director of Government Relations & Communications
C. (416) 919-9798

E. jcouto@oacp.ca

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