The Commission of Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) calls it early warning. A comprehensive Personnel Early Warning System does just what the name implies. It identifies agency employees who have developed a pattern of behavior that indicates that agency intervention efforts may be necessary. The key to all of this is the word “early”. Identify a pattern of behavior early, before it becomes serious.
The CALEA standard that mandates a Personnel Early Warning System says that an agency should not be faced with investigating an employee for a serious case of misconduct only to find there was an escalating pattern of less serious misconduct, which could have been abated through intervention.
We strongly believe that first line supervision is critical to a successful EI (Early Intervention) system. Too often we see the EI system driven by a single component or by a single supervisor charged with the function. Although the internal affairs function plays an important role it should not drive the system. Who knows an employee better than the first line supervisor?
We also believe that every agency is different. Each agency needs to build their policy to fit their needs. We do not believe that you should have to adapt your policy to make Guardian Tracking work for you. We think that Guardian Tracking needs to adapt to your policy. And it will!
With Guardian Tracking you decide exactly what data you will track by creating “incident categories” that mirror your agency policy. After that you set time and occurrence thresholds that will trigger a “flag” to everyone in the employee’s chain of command when those thresholds are met. After an EI flag is cleared, it will trigger again if the employee has another incident within the prescribed time frame.
What happens when an EI flag occurs? Generally, authority is given to the first line supervisor to review the incidents which triggered the review along with all other documented incidents within a defined time period. This will allow the supervisor to determine the appropriate response. The response and related incidents can be reviewed by everyone up the chain of command as a means of checks and balances to the system.
You need to see how this works. Call us for a free demonstration of the Guardian Tracking product.
