NYPD Abandons Paper Memo Books for New iPhone App

[ignatius345]

No paper trail? Hard to see how this could go wrong...

 

[Vjosullivan]

I'm going to put money on a lot of speech-to-text use, which is a good thing!

Good luck drawing a quick diagram with speech-to-text.

 

[calstanford]

Welcome to 2007!

 

[SeaFox]

I'm going to put money on a lot of speech-to-text use, which is a good thing!

Not until we all start driving hovercrafts and transporting aquatic life.

 

[miniyou64]

This will not bold well.

That raises some interesting privacy questions - if Apple is getting audio of officers dictating the details of criminal cases. Is there some law enforcement equivalent of HIPPA laws?

It should be completely transparent

 

[svenning]

I assume the box "Used excessive power" will be checked by default...

 

[philip456]

RE: The New York City Police Department is retiring the handwritten memo books...

I cannot believe that this passed any sort of usability testing.

Compared to the memo books it's going to be,

• Data entry is slower.
• In a stressful situation, autocorrect and misspellings are going to be maddening.
• Using Siri, will result in many errors, when there isn't time to go back and properly check and correct entries.
• Flipping back and forth between entries is quick in a memo book but slow and irritating in an app.

I guess they will get used to it but I pity cops with big fingers fighting the small keyboards.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

I like the idea, but unless there's a very solid digital signature and timestamping (also usign 3rd party services) in place, the "can't be faked" part, is tricky.
A handwritten note is also much easier to use at court. I'd rather use a reguler pen, that transmitts the note to the app and/or have some kind of pressure sensitive surface below the paper that records what's written (or drawn!!!) on the paper.
That won't give you searchable memos, but quite frankly I question the real benefit of that when considering the drawbacks of not freely handwriting/drawing.

People need to understand that a touchscreen is not a 100% replacement for paper. It's a 99,9% replacement. And notes are part of that 0,1%.

 

[MRrainer]

As has been pointed out, they're undoubtedly running a MDM solution that gives them a corporate backdoor. You would be screaming if police officers could use their phones and block access by Internal Affairs.

It‘s not about the NYPD - it’s about somebody else.

 

[Solomani]

Oh wonderful. This can only lead to hundreds of NYPD iPhones being investigated by subpoena any time there is a case involving policy brutality, etc.

And every time it becomes a public relations nightmare for Apple.

 

[Dubthewiser]

Effectively making it a Doza pad... NINE-NINE!!!

 

[cmaier]

I like the idea, but unless there's a very solid digital signature and timestamping (also usign 3rd party services) in place, the "can't be faked" part, is tricky.
A handwritten note is also much easier to use at court. I'd rather use a reguler pen, that transmitts the note to the app and/or have some kind of pressure sensitive surface below the paper that records what's written (or drawn!!!) on the paper.
That won't give you searchable memos, but quite frankly I question the real benefit of that when considering the drawbacks of not freely handwriting/drawing.

People need to understand that a touchscreen is not a 100% replacement for paper. It's a 99,9% replacement. And notes are part of that 0,1%.

A handwritten note is not easier to use in court.
Digital records are used in court every day.

 

[nylonsteel]

hate it when police pull you over for speeding or something and you cannot read the copy they give you
hope this move helps with that for the citizen
this reminds me of an analogy of police back in the day handing out donut shops
now they are at starbucks or coffee bean or peets for coffee for better coffee

 

[Rojaaemon]

Well, as long as a government worker doesn't do something really bad and then the FBI tries to unlock his iPhone and can't do it because they don't know his password and they go to the government that owns the device and issued it to their employee and they say, "yes, it's our iPhone, but we don't control the passwords for the iPhones that we issue to our employees. Call Apple and see if they'll unlock it for you." [See 2015 San Bernardino Attack]

 

[4jasontv]

When you finish an entry, you electronically sign it with a PIN, password, or biometrics. That's how electronic lab notebooks and medical records work. This is similar to a paper notebook where you draw a line then sign/initial each entry, and if it's critical, you have a witness sign it.

You just gave me terrible O chem PTSD.

 

[Teammm]

First thing that came to my mind was the ability for the notes to then be edited and fabricated.

 

[dontwalkhand]

Related point... Do any US cops use body cams yet?
UK ones do for quite a while now.

Yes they do

 

[loybond]

In the first few years of the iPhone, I chose it over Android phones for many reasons, but one of them was that the keyboard was really good. I could blaze fast on it. Now, I use swipe-type keyboards, and I'm incredibly fast at it. It's also really easy! There's no comparison to handwriting, which from my perspective would be super tedious.

Any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to take serious notes on a smart phone? I don't care how good the app or interface is anything more than 'jotting down' a phone number is maddening.

I guess I am old.

 

[JediStarWars]

Not a conspiracy theorist, but I say this with healthy cynicism, let's keep in mind... This makes it easier to steal, lose, destroy, and manipulate data compared to actual handwritten notes...

 

[julianhj]

My local police have been using various Samsung Galaxy phones for the last few years.

 

[dontwalkhand]

Not a conspiracy theorist, but I say this with healthy cynicism, let's keep in mind... This makes it easier to steal, lose, destroy, and manipulate data compared to actual handwritten notes...

In terms of handwritten notes that they already modify by adding pages to etc or just destroy the entire thing.

if they destroy the phone the data is already on the server.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

🧑🏾‍🦱🧑🏾‍🦱with 🔫 🏃🏾‍♂️ to the 🚉 on 51st/Broad

 

[kaycrystal626]

They should do that with doctors also. Have you seemed most doctor's handwriting? They are awful!

 

[960design]

I was involved in getting a group of clinicians converted from hand written to electronic progress notes. One of their main complaints was that it made it harder to change what they had written. They were never suppose to be making changes, but they didn’t like this system enforcing that rule.

I wrote the same sort of rules into a reporting system. Users really hated not being able to go back and make changes to spelling, using the wrong word, ect. They could of course immediately add a new note with the correction, but not change the original ( or the note for that matter ). They adapted.
[automerge]1581028853[/automerge]

They should do that with doctors also. Have you seemed most doctor's handwriting? They are awful!

We tried over 20 years ago. Doctors (ER) were too busy to type, nurses were too bloody to type. Now with much faster processors, I bet they could use something voice activated to create their chart orders and notes. Seems like an easy project.

 

[Anijake]

As long as they can not erase, with pen and paper you can tell if pages are torn out, you can tell if things are erased and changed.