SPECIAL REPORT Body Cam Evidence Systems
tal evidence and Digital Ally strives to educate their customers on digital evidence storage, with an emphasis on department policy. Data retention times can easily be the highest cost for a digital video project. Gordon stated, “However, correctly correlating video event
types to known timeframes will drastically cut costs for a depart- ment; event-driven retention. When it comes to data loss, redun- dancy is key. We highly recommend a backup solution be in place. We work with the department to determine the best method for their specifi c use case. Whether locally hosted, or cloud, our goal is education and to sell a solution, not only a camera.”
www.digital-policing.com NICE
The NICE investigative solution automates and expedites the collection, analysis, and sharing of case evidence. Investigators collect information from many data sources, not just body cams, but ALPR, in-car videos, 911 and interview recordings, crowd- sourced data, CAD and RMS. The solution’s integration capa- bilities allow investigators to collect and correlate evidence from a variety of applications and sources. NICE helps automate and expedite content collection and pro- vides tools to visualize and analyze evidence and help investigators
connect the dots, fi gure out what is missing, and share that informa- tion with their chain of command and the prosecutor’s offi ce. Rod Guy, NICE Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, stated, “It is surprising how manual and how limited tools are for detectives.” While case evidence might be digital, USB sticks or CDs, formats may not be compatible. “Body-worn cameras were the tipping point. Detectives may have to access 10-20 silos to collect information.” NICE connects all these sources and brings all content relevant to that case back to the investigator. The NICE solution removes these problems by automatically transcoding video into a playable format while retaining the original. All relevant media comes to the detective investigating the case
with content analytics to gain insight into the information, with speech to text analytics for recorded 911 calls and interview room recordings. Guy explained, “It is not just database searching but content searching. If a witness mentioned a vehicle with a logo of ‘Joe’s Plumbing,’ the solution may fi nd another unconnected 911 call of a car accident involving a vehicle with ‘Joe’s Plumbing’ on the side, information the detective would otherwise not have had. NICE Investigate’s visualization tools then put this evidence into context based on time, sequence, and location to help investigators understand the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ of their case.” Detectives now have the ability to synchronize playback of everything in sequence of events including, CCTV, ATM camera footage, 911 audio recordings, and BWC (body-worn camera) recordings. Being able to tell the story of before, during, and after is powerful and an important tool for crime solving and prosecution that has been hampered previously by information being in different silos, now managed by NICE. NICE’s solution is deployed on the Microsoft Azure govern-
ment cloud platform, which is CJIS security-compliant and the cloud-based SaaS solution gives the customer a scalable solu- tion. According to Guy, “Large data sets are sometimes neces- sary in investigations so customers can scale their needs without deploying a lot of onsite hardware and storage. For instance, the solution can crowd source content from the
public and allow businesses to register their CCTV cameras with the police department. The public has smartphones and video they will share with law enforcement. This new reality was demonstrated after the Boston Marathon bombing when crowd sourcing crashed their existing system with 13,000 videos and photos in the fi rst few hours, taking the police a few days to ingest and start to analyze information.” SaaS saves cost and provides economic benefi ts for depart-
ments that do not have IT. Guy reported, “The job of policing is the same for smaller agencies as large; BWCs are used across the country, and departments face the same issues, the same chal- lenges with the same information silos. This solution can serve small agencies as well as large ones.” Redaction is very important and the solution can track a face
or license plate throughout the video, to either redact or high- light it. Chain of custody is also critical, ensuring information integrity, including how evidence was brought in, retained, who annotated and viewed it, and with whom it has been shared, which all needs to be maintained and tracked, with this continu- ity and chain of custody capable of being proved in court.
36 LAW and ORDER I June 2016
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