Jonesville (NC) Police Department

The Challenge

As the officer manager for the Jonesville Police Department (JPD), Tasha Ferguson bears the responsibility of keeping the department’s policies up to date and ensuring officers have the latest policies.

For a long time, that process was inefficient and unreliable. The JPD policy manual was paper-based, “so every time you updated a section you had to print it out, give it to each officer and hope they stuck it in their book – which they often did not,” Ferguson says. “We didn’t have anything reliable in terms of acknowledgment tracking.”

Keeping the JPD’s policies in line with changing laws also proved difficult. “Our policies were out of date and they were not customized to our agency,” Ferguson says. “We had taken the approach of getting a policy from another agency, removing their name and adding ours. The policies were not built for our agency.”

Adding to the challenges was training. “Our officers want intermediate and advanced certificates, but we’re a small agency, so it’s hard to send officers to training,” Ferguson says.

The Solution

Recognizing these challenges were not abating, the agency started to look for answers. A previous JPD chief had evaluated Lexipol’s North Carolina Law Enforcement Policies & Training solution, but the department never fully committed to the project. A couple years later, the effort took on new life under a new chief.

“We ended up going back with Lexipol because of the policy updates,” Ferguson says. “The policies were more accurate, more thorough than anything we’d had before.” Lexipol’s solution offers a comprehensive set of policies via an online and mobile platform that electronically issues policies and tracks officer acknowledgments. Policy updates are issued as state and federal laws change. Equally important for JPD, Lexipol policies are designed to be customized for the specific agency, doing away with the “borrowed” policy effect.

JPD worked with Lexipol’s Implementation Services team, which provided guidance in reviewing and customizing the policies for their agency. The rollout to the officers went well. “When you hand them a three-ring binder with 6,000 pages, no one wants that,” Ferguson says. “So they really took to the Lexipol system because of the convenience of having the policy in their hands where they could access it. Also, it’s so much more customized to our agency; I think we all appreciate that.”

Two years after implementing Lexipol policies, the JPD added a subscription to PoliceOne Academy, Lexipol’s learning management system that provides thousands of online courses as well as training management features. “It’s great for the officers to pick and choose what courses they want to take and when they want to take them,” Ferguson says.

The Results

Using Lexipol’s policies and training solutions, the JPD has experienced dual benefits of convenience and cost-effectiveness. “It was always difficult for us to keep the policies up to date,” Ferguson says. “It’s a big thing for me, knowing that Lexipol has lawyers who review the legislation and create the updates. All I have to do is hit that ‘accept update’ button and know we’re up to date with laws and regulations.”

On the training side, “it’s more cost-effective,” Ferguson says. “It’s hard for us to send officers to training. It gets very expensive. Currently we’re three officers short, so it’s even more stressful. Lexipol allows us to provide an entire training library to the officers and they can get their training hours in and earn those certificates they need for career advancement.”

Like many small agencies, the JPD needs easy-to-use solutions that save time and money. “I really appreciate Lexipol,” Ferguson says. “It’s very user-friendly, and the customer support has been extremely helpful.”