Met Police / Violence Reduction Unit
Working with the Met Police and London’s Violence Reduction Unit, we built a system that connects the people who respond to serious violence to police control rooms, to reduce the community impact of knife crime.
Now SIM Community Safety Manager, live in London since April 2023 and in development to prepare it for national launch.
The challenge
When serious violence happens, the people best placed to calm a community are rarely the first to know. Community responders, local authorities and the police each held part of the picture. Before SIM, police partner messages took seven to nine hours to reach local authority response teams during the week, and up to 48 hours at weekends.
What we produced
SIM is a serious incident alerting and workflow system, developed with the Met, the Violence Reduction Unit and London’s local authorities. Alerts from police control rooms reach the right responders on their phones, with the protocol for what to do next built in.
Everyone in the group shares the same situational awareness: maps show cordons, rendezvous points and any other information needed to keep teams informed and safe. The system helps people make the best decisions for the best outcomes following incidents of serious violence.
What changed
In its first year, 577 senior police and local authority professionals were trained on the system and 678 incidents were managed through it. 85% of incidents reached the local authority within 45 minutes, and 72% were managed using SIM’s protocols.
SIM is now in development to prepare it for national launch.