It looks like the New York City Police Department's plan to deploy Windows Phones to all 36,000 officers has paid off. According to a new report, using the smartphones has helped the NYPD shave critical time off of its average response times.

From NYDailyNews:

"We're shaving over a minute off of these average response times. And, somewhat more impressively, for critical crimes in progress, we're also down nearly 12% — to 4 minutes and 26 seconds, from just over 5 minutes at the same time last year." One of the NYPD's apps, for 911 calls, allows cops to get going to a crime scene even before being alerted by a dispatcher.

And the Windows Phones in use are seeing a lot of interaction from officers. For some perspective, the report notes that on one day alone, around 7,000 officers used their smartphones to click on more than 29,000 911 alerts and run 26,000 investigative queries.