Protected Places: How Advanced Info Sharing with Battle Creek Police Brings Safer Responses

This time on the BC CIty Connection, Battle Creek Police Sgt. Corey Champlin discusses Protected Places, a voluntary program that helps dispatch and officers get better information during emergencies. 

Sgt. Champlin shares how optional live camera access, up-to-date contacts, and shared floor plans can make responses faster, safer, and more informed.

Episode Resources
More Info: Battle Creek Police Protected Places Program

Watch the video of this discussion here or see the episodes on Access Vision in Battle Creek Tuesdays at 6:30 PM on channel 17/917.

BC CIty Connection Podcast is produced by Livemic Communications.

Transcript

Welcome And Program Overview

Richard Piet 0:04

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome back to the BC City Connection. This is the official podcast from the City of Battle Creek City Hall. Thanks for being with us. You can click on other of our episodes. Just go where you get podcasts, or maybe the City of Battle Creek's YouTube channel and find us there. You might also be watching us on Access Vision. Thanks for that. Today, Sergeant Corey Champlin joins us from the Battle Creek Police Department to talk about something called Protected Places. Hello, Sergeant. Hi, Richard. How are you? Great. Thanks for this opportunity. So, what is Protected Places?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 0:42

So, Protected Places is a voluntary public-private partnership between the police department and uh the community members. What does it do? So the goal is pretty simple. The idea behind it is we want a better information during emergencies to allow a faster and safer response.

Richard Piet 1:00

Is this for the public or for business? What's the idea here?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 1:05

Uh so it's for both. It's kind of scalable. You can uh choose what you want to do or what you want to share. Uh the idea behind it is that you can share your camera locations. You can actually share live feed of your camera system during emergencies if you'd like, or you can just share contact information for your business or property as well, so that if we do have an emergency, we would know who to talk to or reach out to. What if you have cameras, their locations, and then if you do share cameras, uh, we would be able to live stream those cameras for a safer, more efficient response.

Richard Piet 1:38

Okay. I'm wrapping my head around this. So if you know this in advance, and let's say a business has shared its camera link with you, and you get a call for service at that location, you could immediately stream that video and see what you see.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 1:56

Yeah, so it would be something to the effect of dispatch could live stream it uh as they're sending officers to the call. Uh, could also be an officer on station potentially that would be able to have access to that video and be able to give live pertinent information that's real, real time because things progress very rapidly out in the field, and that would change our response.

Real-Time Video During Emergencies

Richard Piet 2:18

Yeah, you start to see the benefit of this. Now, talk about what happens now without protected places. Let us make a distinction. So you get a call somewhere and you're responding to that, but you really don't know what you're going to.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 2:34

Yeah, for sure. So the way it works now is someone would call dispatch and they report a crime or whatever they're observing, right? Uh, let's we can come up with something. So say it's uh uh burglary alarm at a residence or a business or something, right? Dispatch would receive a call. They would get provided information from either the caller that's on scene or it could be uh an alarm company per se. They would then put that in the computer, they would uh get on the radio and then get a hold of an officer, dispatch them to the location given whatever information they have at the time. Um, and the officer is going to respond from their location to the location of the crime or alarm, and that could take several minutes. So uh I think average response time is generally like three to seven minutes uh anywhere in the city. So a lot of things can change in that three to seven minutes from the officer getting the call and then proceeding to that location.

Richard Piet 3:26

And now contrast that if it's a protected place, how does it help in that three to seven minutes?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 3:33

Yeah, absolutely. So it's gonna start off the same dispatch is gonna receive a call from the alarm company or a person on scene, but then if they have access to that video, they could pull that up and then see real life time. Yeah, I see an individual that is breaking into this business. Uh, this is their description. Uh, you know, it's white male wearing a black shirt with tennis shoes and white hat, etc. He's going around to the back of the building. They can give a play-by-play of uh what they see at the time. So they could give uh suspect information if they leave the scene during that response time. Uh they could give a direction of travel for that suspect. And then officers, when they get there, they'd also, if say the individual's armed, they would know that information. Uh so it's you're much more equipped to deal with whatever you arrive to on scene. Whereas if you don't have the protected places, you're just arriving based on the information you were given, which could be very limited at the time.

Richard Piet 4:27

So yeah. Imagine that. You could walk into a place, walk into a situation with none of that information, but with protected places, you already got a leg up here on what to expect. Absolutely.

No Cameras? Contacts And Floor Plans

Richard Piet 4:42

So, what if you don't have cameras? Is this still helpful?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 4:46

Yeah, so you can still sign up. You can uh get on the program, sign up with your location, and at least give contact information as like an emergency contact. Uh, we look for that all the time, especially for uh alarms. Uh so if we do come across something, we at least know who to reach out to. Sometimes that changes, especially for businesses. Businesses usually you might use a manager as a point of contact for our for an alarm, and sometimes management changes. Um, people get promoted, etc. So it's nice to have current information. So in the event that we do need someone to respond to that location, we know who exactly to reach out to and can and get a hold of them effectively.

Richard Piet 5:22

Do you have to have a security system or an alarm company that you're engaged with for this to work?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 5:30

Uh, you don't. So for the protected places, if you want to do camera integration, you're obviously gonna have to have cameras. That they in getting on the website, and we'll give that to you later in the podcast. But uh there are several software and hardware that will directly link in. And then there are some that are gonna require a safety hub. So depending on what you have, is gonna depend on the setup that you're gonna have to uh go through the process of doing to make it work, but then it would allow us to uh stream that video when necessary to actually respond to a call.

Richard Piet 6:06

Okay, I want to make sure I understand that. So you can have a business, let's say, but you might not have cameras. This is still helpful, and there's still some kind of video component with that. Did I understand that right?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 6:20

Uh no. So if you have videos, then we would be able to, uh, of course, with your agreement, and there's uh um an MOU that you would sign and so forth, and we can get into that too. But if you have cameras, then we could potentially get them integrated so that you could live stream. You don't have to do it though. So if you don't have cameras, um, we obviously aren't gonna be able to stream any information, but you can still sign up on the website, get your information in there, at least have an emergency contact and get the ball rolling so that we do have some communication in case there is uh any sort of call for service at your location.

Richard Piet 6:56

Yeah. And you probably get other information from this too. So, for example, if I have a business and I don't have cameras, but I'm also telling you what the layout of my business is and the things of that nature, maybe.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 7:10

Yep, absolutely. So you can also upload floor plans to your business. So that's completely at your discretion. You don't have to. Uh if you'd like to, then you can. And what that does for us is if we do have a call for your business, and if you look through the city, we have businesses of all sizes. There's very small businesses, the size of a residential house, maybe, all the way up to we have factories out in the fort that are absolutely huge, right? And when we have to respond to calls for service to those places, having floor plans would be vital to something that if it's an emergency that's true emergency and we have to get there quick, knowing exactly where you're going to that location is going to be vital because some of these buildings have multiple buildings too, right? So you might as an employee you'd be very familiar with where you're going, but as an officer responding to that location, if you've never been or don't have access to that information, it can be a maze. And when seconds count, it's important to go directly where you need to go.

Richard Piet 8:05

Yeah, that's this makes a lot of sense. And we elected to talk about this from the business point of view, but you made a point in the beginning of this discussion that you can do this as a resident too, right?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 8:16

Yeah, absolutely. So this is designed for everybody. Um, it's probably going to be more common to some of the businesses or schools or maybe even faith-based organizations and so forth, but residents can also do it. Anyone's will more than welcome to sign up and participate. And it is voluntary. Absolutely.

Trust, Rules, And Crime Deterrence

Sgt. Cory Champlin 8:34

So it's that's the nice thing about it is that we want to build trust and transparency in this. And there's policies that we have in place. And then there's also, I talked about it earlier with MOUs, which is an agreement between the organization and then the department, that we all have to follow rules and regulations to make this work, right? And it's also important to note that on the back end, anytime that that video is brought up by somebody on the police side or of dispatch, it's logged and tracked. So, in full transparency, anytime that would be uh brought up by somebody on our side, you as the owner or organization would have access to see who uh accessed that video as well. I see.

Richard Piet 9:15

So uh it's this pretty common these days with police departments. I presume it is.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 9:21

It is. So it's growing in popularity for sure. Um, I know Detroit has a program that they've had in place for several years, uh and they found some success over there. They incorporated it into a lot of gas stations uh over there that they had high crime rates and they saw uh significant reduction in crime over a few years. I want to say it was in the area of 25% reduction of pretty good reduction in crime. And as as we all know, technology is only getting more and more incorporated in our everyday lives, and that's the same for us here in law enforcement as well.

Richard Piet 9:52

So when you say this has had an effect up to 25% reduction in crime, is that simply because uh a perpetrator might realize that this is a quote protected place and so they back off?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 10:08

Yeah, so a lot of those places they can have marketing materials too that even show they're part of the program. And then as a the police department, we want the community to know that this program's out there and available as well. And I think that does bring some comfort and safety factor to the public, knowing that hey, if I was on this premise and something does happen, they have the ability to pull up those cameras and see exactly what's going on in real time. And I think that does bring that that factor of safety and security, which is what everyone wants,

How To Join And Who To Call

Sgt. Cory Champlin 10:40

right?

Richard Piet 10:40

Yeah, so someone's listening to this and they're saying, Okay, I want to do that. What do they do?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 10:45

Yeah, they can go to the website, so battle creekmi dot motorola solutions.com slash home. That's a little bit long, I know, but uh that is the where you would go, and that's specific to the Battle Creek Police Department. So you can look on there for more information and materials about the program uh is all right on there. They could also reach out to me personally if they have any questions. Again, Sergeant Corey Champlin, Battle Creek Police Department. I can give you my phone number and email address too to make sure that the community is, like I said, if they have questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Richard Piet 11:20

Yeah, in fact, uh, we'll put the link to this in the show notes for this episode so you can go there and click right through if you like. Go ahead with a phone number.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 11:28

Yeah, phone number uh to my office 269-966-3466.

Richard Piet 11:35

All right, and we'll put your email in the uh show notes as well if folks want to reach out that way and uh ask questions. Uh of course, there are probably some folks saying, I don't I don't know about this. They don't have to do it if that's true, but maybe they might want to just get some info about it.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 11:53

Yeah, absolutely. And the in the program, you can there's no contract, there's no length of term, nothing like that. You can sign up anytime, you can leave anytime as well.

Richard Piet 12:02

Are there any consistencies that you've seen with those who have signed up? Is it mostly business? Is it mostly residents? Uh, what motivates them? Uh I suspect the answer is obvious, but I'm asking anyway, what motivates them to want to do it?

Sgt. Cory Champlin 12:17

Yeah, so we're literally just starting this program off. So we don't have a bunch of data to really reflect on for that. But I would imagine it's gonna be more of the business-centric focus at first, starting off, and then maybe as it progresses and gets more broad that you might see some uh residential people pick it up as well. We'd love to hear feedback as well.

Richard Piet 12:36

Yeah, you're probably interested to know too how this affects your calls and your response. And you're gonna be analyzing this.

Sgt. Cory Champlin 12:47

Absolutely. Yeah, we analyzed a lot of stuff we do. We have an in-house analyst that uh does crime trends amongst a lot of other analyst capacities, and she does a phenomenal job. And this is another thing that we're gonna analyze too and see is it worth it for us and the community. Uh, do we get what we think we're gonna get out of it? And we think it's gonna do well. We think it is gonna be fruitful for the community as a whole and make it a safer place to work and play and live. And that's what we're trying to accomplish.

Richard Piet 13:13

All right. Uh Battle Creek Police Department rolling out something called protected places. As you've just heard from Sergeant Corey Chaplin, this is uh a program, a voluntary program to give police information about your business or residence in advance. So if there were to be a call, perhaps uh the advanced information can make a difference in uh the outcome of that call. So have a look on the website. Link is in the show notes. Gather that information about protected places or call Sergeant Champlin if you want at 966 3466 for more info. All right, Sergeant. We'll be interested to know how this progresses. Absolutely. Thanks, Richard. Sergeant Corey Champlin on the BC City Connection.