It’s 10-21 Day and we’re celebrating! On October 21, the team at Motorola Solutions applauds the over 210,000 officers who use 10-21 Police Phone and their ongoing effort to improve community relations.
That’s 1 in 5 officers dedicated to finding innovative technology to make their job safer and more productive while seamlessly communicating with citizens. And that’s something to celebrate!
What is 10-21 Police Phone?
10-21, radio code for “make a call,” is law enforcement’s most widely used mobile app. The technology allows officers to make free calls to citizens that get answered. Calls are made from local, not blocked, phone numbers without revealing an officer’s personal number, and encouraging call pick up.
Citizens benefit from faster response times and a confidential way to return calls directly to the officer assigned their case. The callback request ensures officers don’t miss a critical call but allows them to call back when it is safe to do so or when they are on duty.
The free app helps facilitate over 1,000,000 citizen conversations every month.
The Innovation Behind the Call
10-21 Police Phone was created by Callyo — a cloud-based technology company with a mission to build solutions for law enforcement designed to combat child predators, human traffickers, and those who prey on innocent victims.
In August 2020, Motorola Solutions acquired Callyo and its suite of cloud-based mobile applications. The acquisition adds critical capabilities that will enable information to move seamlessly from the field to Motorola Solutions’ command center software suite with future integrations.
Innovation in Times of Need
Callyo has a history of providing free tools to law enforcement to help make their jobs safer and a little easier. In fact, the team received a request in the Spring of 2020 to create an app that allows police to safely interact with citizens during COVID-19 quarantines and social distancing protocols.
The development team worked nonstop for two weeks and launched NECTAR–an acronym for “non-emergency call to a resident.” The app allows a police officer to make a two-way video call from 10-21 Police Phone, to respond to a non-urgent citizen concern.
During a time when agencies were looking for ways to continue safely interacting with citizens, not unlike telemedicine for healthcare or Zoom for education, NECTAR is a way for residents to receive the same type of video experience, but with a police officer.
While NECTAR was developed in response to COVID-19, the app has quickly gained popularity and has staying power to become an essential tool.
Introducing New Scan Feature
In the summer of 2021, the Callyo team stayed true to their innovation commitment and hosted their annual hackathon. A hackathon is a common event at tech companies. It’s when programmers get together for a short time, often over the weekend and without sleep, to collaborate on a project or solution.
Out of the hackathon came the idea for a new 10-21 Police Phone feature.
Introducing Scan — an easy way for officers to scan identity documents, such as a drivers license, from their mobile phone, and instantly send the details to their in-car laptop. From there, officers can quickly cut and paste the information into their agency’s record system, and the data is never stored on an officer’s personal device.
This new time-saving feature is available for iPhone/iOS. Just open the 10-21 Police Phone app and you’ll see a purple banner across the top introducing this “new experimental feature.” Click on the banner and it’ll take you to Scan. (If you don’t see it, be sure to update your 10-21 app to the newest version in the App Store.)
Once you click on Scan, you’ll need to visit https://scan.10-21.com on your desktop or laptop computer and capture the QR code with the camera on your mobile device to sync the two devices. Once synced, follow the prompts for easy use.
If the feature proves to be beneficial to this group of iOS users, it will be released to Android users as well.
Click here to learn more about 10-21 Police Phone. If you aren’t already a user, download the app for free from the App Store or Google Play.
