Providencia

The Public Safety Department of the Municipality of Providencia took 5 minutes to arrive at the scene of a crime from the time they received a phone call. After implementing SOSAFE, that response time was shortened to just 3 minutes. How did they do it?

Company

The city (commune) of Providencia is in the capital of Chile. With a floating population that exceeds one million people and with more than 3,000 monthly procedures, the Providencia security department decided to take SOSAFE because they wanted to have:

• Instant visibility into what's happening in your neighborhoods.
• Direct connection and support from your neighbors.
• Better response times to neighbors.

Challenges before SOSAFE

Before SOSAFE, the security department found out about problems mainly through its telephone line 1414. Other means are the radio of its patrols, WhatsApp groups, social networks, community alarms, among others.

How did you find out and why did you decide to implement SOSAFE?

We knew that SOSAFE was used by other communes and that the number of users was growing. We were clear that we had to look for an alternative for our neighbors that was not just a telephone line. We were looking for a tool that offered issue geolocation and among the options that came to us, SOSAFE fulfilled what we were looking for, in addition to connecting with citizen security from another city, ensuring that our neighbors are also protected in other communes.

– Rocío Brizuela, Director of Citizen Security in Providencia

Implementation

Initially, SOSAFE was configured so that the citizen security area would attend to all the reports. Over time, other departments of the municipality were added, such as the OIRS and Inspection, so that they could directly attend to the categories of reports that corresponded to them using the automatic assignment of SOSAFE.

What is it for and how do you use SOSAFE in your day to day?

SOSAFE helps us to quickly attend to our neighbors in emergency matters, decongest our 1414 emergency phone line and be aware of what is happening in our commune and provide them with a better tool so that neighbors can communicate with each other.

– Vicente Villalobos, Project Analyst at Providencia

Only internet access and a computer were needed to give Providencia's Security operators access to the platform. Training was given to the operators and they gave advice on good care practices for the neighbors. The intuitive and easy-to-use interface of the SOSAFE platform allowed rapid adoption by them and in less than 1 day they were ready to serve their neighbors.

What do you like most about SOSAFE?

What we like the most is geolocation, being able to receive audiovisual material from the neighbors and being able to observe the community interested in security issues.

– Francisco Díaz-Valdés, Head of Corporate Affairs and Community Relations at Providencia

Results and benefits

In days they could already see what was happening in the commune and with this make better decisions on where to allocate their patrols and mobiles. Allowing residents to mark geographically where the incidents were occurring and provide both images and videos helped them improve the management they did in their commune and with it, make a better commune for everyone.

Among the results in which SOSAFE has helped them are:

• Increase the visibility of crimes with a greater social connotation from 20% to 40%.
• Reduce your response times from 5 to 3 minutes.
• Increase neighborhood participation with more than 24,000 residents in SOSAFE.

How does Providencia do to improve its response times?

• They review the heat maps filtering by dates and types of incidents in SOSAFE.
• They meet weekly to review the places of crime in the commune and based on that they update the routes of their mobile phones.
• Depending on the traffic intensity of the places, they decide whether to place patrol cars or motorcycles to patrol the sector.

The award Providencia received

The good work and the constant concern to give better attention to its neighbors led to the fact that in 2019 the Municipality of Providencia was one of the winners of the international contest of "Good Practices in Criminal Analysis 2019" of the Paz Ciudadana Foundation.