IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Public Safety Data Platform ForceMetrics Raises $22M

The company gets real-time data to officers so they can have a fuller understanding of emergency calls and the people involved. ForceMetrics last year became part of an Amazon gov tech innovation push.

An officer standing in front of a police car with its lights on.
Shutterstock
Public safety platform firm ForceMetrics, already part of an Amazon government technology program, has raised $22 million from investors — including an operation with ties to Star Wars creator George Lucas.

The company was founded in 2020 and sells a search and analytics platform that law enforcement can use in real time to make decisions about emergency responses.

The company uses artificial intelligence and other tech to summarize reports and provide information to officers in the field that can help them better determine the nature of the call and access other contextual data.

The company says 30 departments in 11 states use its product.

The fresh capital will help ForceMetrics expand its reach to more clients, CEO and co-founder Andre McGregor told Government Technology.

“We take complex data and make a simplified story” is how he described the company in the wake of this funding round. “We are changing the paradigm of data and policing. Data used to be for nerds. Now data is for everyone.”

He said his company’s platform is meant for use by all officers, not just detectives or crime analysts. That means the future of ForceMetrics could involve community dashboards and giving multiple agencies the ability to share more data.

To that end, the fresh capital also will fund hiring of engineers and other workers, McGregor said.

The funding came from the Hobson Lucas Family Foundation — which was founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson — along with such operations as Stand Together Ventures Lab, Govtech Fund, Flybridge Capital and Growth Warrior Capital, according to a statement.

“Data collection is an integral part of policing, yet there’s never been a way to properly analyze and extrapolate the information at a real-time decision moment,” said Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures in the statement. “ForceMetrics is modernizing all that and providing the most relevant information to law enforcement at the moments they need it most.”

Just more than a year ago, Amazon accepted ForceMetrics and 12 other companies focused on public safety and court operations into the AWS GovTech Accelerator.
Thad Rueter writes about the business of government technology. He covered local and state governments for newspapers in the Chicago area and Florida, as well as e-commerce, digital payments and related topics for various publications. He lives in Wisconsin.