Warning: Risk of Serious Harm!
Hindsight is 20/20. Haven’t we all heard that phrase before? I know I have. That’s something I said myself just a few years ago. It was November, the sun was starting to set, and the water was freezing cold. While exploring the shoreline in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with my family, I had fallen a little behind. At some point, I hurried on in an attempt to catch up. I was fully dressed in every-day clothes and had no plans of getting in the water. Every step I took was meticulously calculated to avoid getting wet. In fact, I was quite cautious as I was very aware that I had my shiny brand-new cellphone in my pocket because I had been capturing precious moments of my family together.
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Then it happened. No warning. Unaware that the tide had risen some since my family had crossed the cove in the exact same place, I stepped down only to land into a section of soft sand that engulfed my foot causing me to fall and completely submerge under water. I surfaced stunned, cold, and wet. I was ok, but sadly my cellphone had fallen out of my pocket while I was under the water. Not only were there heartfelt pictures of my beloved kids, but my sister had just been married there at the beach and all those fabulous pictures I had taken of her, and others, were gone, lost with that phone.
In hindsight, I should have set up the backup to my phone before my trip, left my cellphone in the car when we went near the water, paid attention to the rising tide, and possibly even stayed with my family as they explored. Thankfully, I did not get hurt. Though cold and wet, I only lost a phone and some pictures that now solely live in my memories.
While hindsight would have been beneficial in that situation, it does not compare to the uncharted and dangerous situations law enforcement officials face every day. In this post you will learn how SAS Law Enforcement Intelligence uses the Warnings control to help law officials know up-to-date crucial information about an individual or location, as soon as possible.
See how Dictionary.com defines the words hindsight and warning, in the image below.
As you can see, while hindsight can only be helpful for future occurrences, a warning can caution you ahead of the situation enabling one to protect themselves by altering the way the incident is approached.
Let’s say a welfare check is requested of law enforcement at a house that occupies individuals that have a history of drugs and guns and a physically violent past. While officers are trained to know how to handle the unknown, being made aware of these things before approaching the house could assist in avoiding a life-or-death situation. SAS Law Enforcement Intelligence’s Warning control provides warnings to alert users ahead of time to the details contained within an object. In this case, the object would be a person (or persons) and a location.
The image below shows an Edit warnings configuration, entered by an administrator, on a desktop information report page for a Warnings control.
Let’s break down what we see.
- The Warning display name is the text displayed to users when the warning is shown.
- The Warning condition drop-down list displays the selected field that will trigger the warning.
- The Warning severity level is selected.
- The Warning guidance text is the text displayed when a user hovers over the warning.
The following example shows the warnings the user will see displayed on an information report, because of that configuration.
When the checkmark for Risk of serious harm has been selected at the bottom of the page of the information report, the Risk of serious harm warning automatically updates to appear at the top of the object page. Guidance text is also displayed when a pointer is positioned over the warning.
Multiple warnings can be added to a single object, as seen in these examples.
The most important information is displayed in red, first or at the top, less important information is displayed next, in orange, and the least important information is displayed in blue, last or at the bottom. These colors and icons are set and cannot be changed. A number appearing by an icon indicates how many warnings of a particular severity are active for the object. In addition to the warning indicator at the top of the page, a warning dialog box can be configured by your administrator to appear when the object is accessed, as seen below.
The safety of our law enforcement officers is vital. So, to assist with law enforcement safety, before a welfare check is attempted at a house that occupies individuals that have a history of drugs, guns, and physical violence, officers would first search their database in SAS Law Enforcement Intelligence to check for any associated critical warnings linked with any of the known occupants, friends, or location address of that welfare check. While hindsight is said to be 20/20 after the fact, warnings can help prevent situations from escalating into dangerous or fatal situations before they even have a chance to occur.
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