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on ‘what is happening right now in the fi eld.’ With mobile data collection, they can follow or track evidence reports com- ing in live, a major benefi t for small and mid-sized agencies.
echnology adoption by
public safety agencies is not a ques- tion of what to do with it, but how to do it. When crime rates drop, that’s always a good thing. But it’s also a double-edged sword, because then the public, and rightly so, says, “Great, how can you be more effi cient and do it with less staff? How can we get more bang for our public buck?” The key for our industry is to deploy personnel more strategically and use time more effi ciently, and mobile de- vices are primed to do just this. The real-time visibility and effi ciency that mobile data collection provides is important, particularly for major cases or incidents. Traditionally, officers get daily instructions on the day’s case pri- orities, and then all related information for those cases are collected and collated at day’s end. Instead, mobile devices enable public safety personnel to complete elec- tronic paperwork, create scene drawings, add video or audio fi les, and take text or voice-recorded notes then relay this data in real-time to investigators, incident com- manders, and prosecutors. These devices create effi ciency in what used to be an analog workfl ow by making it digital—with oversight—for the front-line offi cers, which allows them to do reporting in a more organized and repeatable way. Mobility and real-time visibility also affect smaller cases. When it comes to smaller cases, it’s hard to justify bringing a crime scene photographer or other investigation special- ists to the scene. However, when offi cers in the fi eld are equipped with mobile de- vices, they can capture all the necessary imagery evidence and notes needed, using a device with which they are already familiar.
In addition to scene docu-
mentation, mobility delivers a huge advantage in that it provides a true, real-time way to update supervisors
Alex Kottoor is the CEO of SceneDoc. LaO Post your comments on this story by visiting
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Many agencies already use a Record Man- agement Systems (RMS), but these lack a mobile component and are a far cry from the kind of mobile and cloud-based evidence col- lection tools available to public safety today. To remedy this, agencies need to integrate the data collected from their mobile devices with their RMS, effectively creating an exten- sion of the RMS the vendor does not need to build and does not need to maintain. To use a real-world example of the ben-
efi ts mobile devices can provide public safety, let’s take a look at how Midland Police Service uses them to enhance orga- nization as well as visibility throughout the crime and incident reporting process. Midland is a town of 16,500 in South- western Ontario with a municipal Cana- dian police service. Despite the town’s diminutive stature, Midland Police Service is a classic early adopter for new technol- ogy. It is part of the Ontario Police Tech- nology Information Cooperative (OPTIC), which is comprised of almost 50 police services that work together, gain group purchasing effi ciencies, share technology research and test-piloting of new applica- tions—along with centralized hosting of common software, hardware and services. Interoperability and communication have been the OPTIC mantra over the last 30 years, and this serves as an inspiration for other local agencies that want to adopt more technology. In late 2014, Midland Police Service decided to run a pilot pro-
gram to evaluate the benefi ts mobile de- vices provide offi cers. It decided to equip a broad scope of Midland Police offi cers in different functions—forensic identifi ca- tion offi cers, crime scene offi cers, technical collision investigators (car collisions), fi eld investigators, and community service offi - cers with the technology. Since the devices were cloud-enabled and highly secure, they allowed near real- time communication and visibility between offi cers in the fi eld, dispatchers, command centers, and other public safety/law en- forcement agencies responding to a scene. This resulted in a more effi cient evidence collection and reporting process, increased preparedness, and cleared the scene faster. Today, Midland Police Service use mo- bile devices to document many cases in court or in the process of investigation. Special Constable Bill Gordon acknowl- edged that as a whole, evidence is col- lected in a more methodical way, and the ease of collection has resulted in more evidence overall. Additionally, autho- rized personnel (with permission) can access information in near real time from any Internet-connected device. Privilege levels within their secure cloud portal can be confi gured too, as the organization’s specifi c needs and hierarchies shift. According to Gordon, “Now each offi - cer can send data back in a timely fashion throughout the day. It makes the whole process simple with everyone on the same page. It changes the process of how you would typically gather evidence, bring it back, dump it, and collate it. With our mo- bile devices, it happens in real time.” If agencies view mobile devices as basic photo-evidence-capture tools, they are behind the times. While these tools enhance evidence collection, the streamlined, organized, and more vis- ible investigation or reporting process they provide is the true benefi t. Mo- bile devices and the application eco- system available today have matured into something that is indispensable to fi eld investigators no matter to what they are responding.
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