GSN Digital Edition April 2016

NICE’s Rodriguez: Technology
continues to transform how law
enforcement handles all aspects of
an investigation
Continued from page 4
officers who need it, said Rodriguez,
who joined NICE as a business development
director for the company’s
Public Safety Business Unit.
The NICE solution is both CJIScompliant
and cloud-based, and
provides permissions-based
access to digital case folders
so task forces and investigative
teams working multiple angles
of a case can collaborate more
effectively while building a case,
instead of sharing evidence the
old fashioned way – on CDs,
DVDs and thumb drives.
There’s also a public interface
where private businesses can register
their CCTV cameras and where
citizens can upload photos or video
they’ve taken of incident scenes, Rodriguez
said. “These capabilities can
significantly reduce the time spent
on manual and tedious tasks officers
and investigators are bogged down
with today,” said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez began his police work
as an officer for the Los Angeles Police
Department 1986. He eventually
rose to the rank of captain for the
nation’s third-largest force before
he moved to Baltimore. There, he
served as the deputy police commissioner
in charge of implementing
numerous reforms as well as leading
several high-level investigations.
During his illustrious career, Rodriguez
earned opportunities to
study at some of the most prestigious
leadership and law enforcement
training programs in the country,
including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
National Academy and
the West Point Leadership Program.
After his retirement, Rodriguez
went to NICE.
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“It’s incredibly rewarding to be
able to take my 30 years of experience
in law enforcement and apply
that knowledge to help police departments
around the country,” said
Rodriguez. “In addition to helping
investigators close more cases faster,
this technology can improve the
success of prosecutions by putting
evidence in proper context so DAs
and juries can better understand all
the underlying facts of the case.”
Technology also is moving forward
in other ways that empower
the general public to interact with
police departments, said Rodriguez,
who was a featured speaker
at two sessions during last month’s
International Wireless Communications
Expo in Las Vegas. That
includes text-to-911 capabilities,
and broader Next Generation 9-1-
1 which will eventually enable witnesses
and other concerned citizens
to send videos and photos in addition
to texts to 9-1-1. In a recent
NICE webinar, only 17 percent
of attendees surveyed had implemented
text-to-911, even though all
major wireless providers offer the
service today. However, 55 percent
of agencies surveyed during the
webinar said they had plans to
implement text-to-911 in the
future, with nearly half those
interested planning on doing so
sometime later this year.
“There’s clear momentum for
text-to-911, and a number of
agencies are also exploring ways to
accept photos and videos from citizens
without waiting for full-fledged
NG9-1-1,” said Rodriguez. “With
these new multimedia interactions,
agencies will need technology to
capture, manage and synchronize
these interactions to put them into
proper context, so they can understand
and evaluate the decisions
and actions of their telecommunicators.
This is an area where NICE
excels as well.”