I know you’re thinking, if you use your personal cell phone on duty some defense attorney is going to take your phone from you because it is now “evidence” and you won’t get your phone back for 6 months.
THE PROBLEM
Let’s be honest. A quick work related call on your personal phone is always a temptation. It is such an annoyance to return to the office to use a department phone. Most departments don’t have the finances to issue work cell phones to their officers and I have to confess, I have been guilty of using my personal phone and blocking my phone number while making work calls.
The problem is when calling from a blocked number or even department issued restricted number, most people won’t answer the phone. It is also more and more common for people to have a setting on their phone that will automatically reject blocked or restricted phone numbers. If the citizen does happen to call dispatch back to talk to you, dispatch will often forward it to the officer’s voicemail. More often than not, dispatch does not have the time to notify the officer a call was forwarded to their voicemail. As a result, response time suffers.
THE SOLUTION
Luckily, Callyo has a new application called 10-21 that enables an officer to use their personal phone and mask their personal number with a new number altogether, thereby protecting the officers’ personal contact information and increasing call back response time. And best of all, it is free!
ABOUT CALLYO
Callyo specializes in mobile tools for law enforcement; in essence, they solve everyday communications problems that officers encounter. Callyo strictly serves law enforcement and has a great reputation in the industry. Callyo prides itself in keeping your work life separate from your personal life.
POSTIVE FEATURES of the 10-21 Application
- Your personal phone record or phone bill will not include a call to the citizen using 10-21 logs; however, Callyo will keep record of the calls you made using 10-21 which are available to your agencies, thereby protecting your personal information.
- The number 10-21 gives to the officer will be similar to the local numbers around them, making it more likely the citizen will answer the call.
- If the citizen does not answer the first time you call, but later calls the number back, the citizen will hear a message saying press 1 to talk to the officer or press 2 to leave a message with the dispatcher.
- If the officer is off duty, their phone will not ring.
- Officers know immediately when citizens are calling back. This is important because often time dispatch does not have time to notify the officer they received a call back from a citizen.
- An individual officer or a department as a whole can sign up. Callyo will verify you are active law enforcement as this is a law enforcement only tool.
- This application really has the ability to increase responsiveness to citizen calls.
DISCLAIMER
Why is it free? Callyo does offer paid services for law enforcement so they may call users to tell you about other sales opportunities. A fair trade in my opinion.
WHERE DO I SIGN UP
Search for “10-21 Police Phone” in the app store which is available for iPhone or Android. More information about the product is available here.
About Callyo
At Callyo, we build innovative, meaningful tools within reach of all in law enforcement to combat crimes such as human trafficking and child exploitation. Callyo’s 10-21 Police Phone and Video products reach over 100,000 sworn officers across over 10,000 agencies and is most likely already in use by your department. Talk to us about how 10-21 Video can turn officers’ existing phones into live-streaming body cameras at a fraction of the cost of new hardware.