FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions

For generations, whenever the police wanted to communicate with the general public, they had to reply on a filtered message. Press conferences, press releases, public statements, and tips issued through the news media are still powerful tools, but they are no longer sufficient in today's interconnected, Internet enabled world. Getting information to the public faster really can be a life-or-death situation.

Law enforcement leaders across the nation were actively searching for affordable, easy-to-deploy solutions that would help them track, monitor, and report data about crimes and criminals.

Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the White House set up a number of task forces to consider how first responders could communicate better with each other. During that process, it became clear that law enforcement needed a better way to communicate with the general public as well.

The Law Enforcement Information Technology Standards Council (LEITSC) issued a report in October, 2007, that described the ideal way for law enforcement to communicate with the public.

The report said that:

* Communication should take place in near real-time, through the tools people use every day: e-mail, the Internet, and SMS text messaging.

* Communication should be two-way, with the public empowered and comfortable in sending messages to law enforcement. (LEITSC also added that the system must be designed so that it would not overwhelm the police with unsolicited phone calls and e-mails.)

* Communication should be relevant to the public ; and to the police.

This report was issued in the final weeks before the Dallas Police Department launched a community service web site created for it by iThinQware founder Dan Elliott. That site met and exceeded the three goals LEITSC had set up for its "ideal system". Not just that, but the underlying architecture and design allowed the initial system to expand and grow into a much more powerful tool than LEITSC envisioned. At the same time the law enforcement community was grappling with its own changing public communication requirements, campus law enforcement agencies were facing the reality of complying with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.

The Clery Act is the landmark federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses. The "Clery Act" is named in memory of 19 year old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery who was raped and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room on April 5, 1986. Jeanne's parents discovered that students hadn't been told about 38 violent crimes on the Lehigh campus in the three years before her murder. They joined with other campus crime victims and persuaded Congress to enact the law. It has been amended and expanded several times over the past decade, and after the tragic mass shooting on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, the Department of Education began issuing record fines to campuses that were not in compliance with all parts of the Clery Act ; including the requirement that campus law enforcement develop a warning or alert system that can notify an entire campus community within 30 minutes of an event. In addition to these two key markets, iThinQware products are valuable to a range of corporate customers including private security firms, property management companies, broadcast and print media, and insurance companies.

For more information about how iThinQware's products apply to your market, please contact us.