As Edmonton tech entrepreneur Sam Jenkins delved into the opaque world of policing, building relationships with officers to create a new mobile app, something unexpected happened.
“I developed an empathy that I didn’t realize I needed to have for law enforcement,” he says. “It’s hard work, and things move slowly, and there’s politics.”
Jenkins is managing partner of technology consulting firm Punchcard Systems. He’s also the CEO of Edmonton startup Standard Field Systems, which uses modern technology to update how police officers conduct roadside tests on drivers suspected of being impaired by alcohol or drugs.
In Canada and the United States, the standard police procedure for assessing suspected impaired drivers is the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST). It tests the ability to stand on one leg, to walk and turn, and the presence of nystagmus, or steadiness of the eyes in a horizontal gaze.
In most jurisdictions, police still record the results of these tests with pen and paper, which creates opportunities for error that can weaken the evidence chain.
Jenkins saw an analog system ripe for a technological update.
“Law enforcement has to be very stable. Innovation isn’t as rapid as perhaps in other industries, but there are opportunities to help law enforcement do a better job for citizens,” he says. “For us, doing a better job at the roadside to keep roads safer seems like a really good step in our purpose as an organization to create a positive transformative impact on the world around us.”
Because the SFST is so widely accepted, Standard Field Systems wanted to “respect” it with its new digital protocol. “We’ve built a digital tool that works and functions the same way as the standard, and then, on the flip side, we’ve also added technology to make it better.” That includes a “muscle memory tool” that reduces the chance of officer errors being made during the test.
The prototype was ready by 2019. It was commercialized in 2021.
“Last year, we participated in the Community Safety and Wellness Accelerator, sponsored by the Edmonton Police Foundation, and that was a pretty big catalyst for us in terms of coalescing our vision from a product perspective and understanding how we build a product where we target law enforcement and create value for this market,” Jenkins says.
Creating products for public organizations is different, he adds.
“If we’re thinking about profit-driven organizations — yeah, I can see how innovation is important to create more value for shareholders. But working in the public safety space, innovation is about creating citizen value and a safer world.”
Standard Field Systems signed its first customer, York Regional Police in Ontario, in June 2023. The company also has several pilots underway. Though the company has worked closely with the Edmonton Police Service in developing the app — in fact, Jenkins says officers on the traffic team were “indispensable” in their support through the innovation cycle — EPS hasn’t signed on. “Not yet,” says Jenkins, with a smile, adding that the digitization of law enforcement is a $200-billion-a-year industry worldwide.
“It’s relatively underserved because it is slow moving. There’s so much opportunity associated with innovation in law enforcement, and we all benefit.”
Jenkins says automating the process can also increase fairness for people who get pulled over.
“By building a tool that helps keep it consistent, it means every time an SFST is performed, it’s done exactly the same way. If we aren’t collecting evidence in a consistent way, it’s not fair to citizens in the community.”
Standard Field Systems’ app turns results and time stamps into a report that becomes part of the evidence file. Police can use the data to match resources to impairment trends.
“Law enforcement is complex, and it’s not the world I came from. So there’s been a lot of learning, and I have quite a bit of gratitude for how open folks have been in sharing their law enforcement stories with us. We’ve had so many conversations with officers who are deeply passionate about change and adaptation and getting better,” Jenkins says.
“We don’t often think about law enforcement being permeable. But in fact, it is a very open community, which has been awesome.”
This article appears in the May 2024 issue of Edify
