Before founding ForceMetrics in 2021, McGregor worked in technology for Goldman Sachs and Cardinal Health, then spent six years with the FBI as a cyber special agent. McGregor, 42, moved back to the private sector in 2015 and focused on IT security, but the 2021 murders of two of his FBI colleagues, Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger, spurred the startup of ForceMetrics.

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There was information in the murderer’s file about him wanting to kill law enforcement officers, “but it was lost in a paragraph in a report that would never surface because there’s too much data,” says McGregor. “Through the tears and sadness, I realized in the conversation around public safety that everyone was talking about hiring more cops or better training them.”

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A serendipitous connection with the Chicago Cubs’ data team led him to realize that the conversation should be about the better use of data, and McGregor ultimately hired developers from the Cubs to ride along with police and develop the ForceMetrics Velocity Platform.

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The platform disrupts the market of legacy public safety technologies by adding, “Google meets Zillow” user interface and capabilities. “We sit on top of really awful, mainframe-style public safety systems that are hard to pull information from,” says McGregor. “If I’m a police officer interacting with you, I know nothing about you. You may think I know everything about you. I know nothing.”

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With the Velocity Platform, however, a wide range of information that could save lives is available and easily accessible to the user. “We’re bringing in lots of data from 911 dispatch, police reports, jail systems, ticketing systems, body cam videos and license plate readers, all in one place,” says McGregor. “Secondly, we’re bringing agencies the ability to share this data.”

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The platform utilizes AI to summarize reports and make it easier for officers to make what are often split-second decisions. “At the end of the day, no one has the time to look at all that information, so what we do is we pull out the things that we think are important,” says McGregor. “This is one of those industries where you have to be right or people die.”

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Staked with $22 million in venture capital, the 40-employee company continues to refine its products as it pursues growth with police departments and other first responders nationwide. “We power half the Denver metro area right now with ForceMetrics, and we’re growing more and more every month,” touts McGregor. “We’re in 35 cities and counties in 12 states.”

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Article via ColoradoBiz

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