Case Study: Durham Regional Police achieves modernized, auditable emergency communications with BlackBerry AtHoc

Durham Regional Police Services Modernizes Communications with BlackBerry AtHoc

Durham Regional Police Services, the tenth largest municipal police force in Canada serving more than 660,000 residents in Ontario, faced fragmented, manual communications for incidents: operators relied on group texts and emails, created ad‑hoc distribution lists, and struggled with limited information from text messages and missed calls when devices were silent. These workarounds made it difficult to maintain accurate contact lists and ensure consistent information collection and distribution during critical events.

Durham implemented BlackBerry AtHoc across phone, email, SMS and mobile channels to centralize alerts, enable real‑time replies and audit all messages and responses. After training operators and adding more than 120 users (bringing total users to over 200), the force gained a communication hub with improved information collection, user accountability and operator satisfaction, and is expanding AtHoc use beyond critical alerts into business continuity and coordinated notifications with partner organizations.

Durham Regional Police

Christine Robson

I.T. Manager