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Law Enforcement/Public Safety
Taming the rising tide of digital evidence
By Linda Haelsen, NICE
Crime solving in the 21st century
hinges on digital evidence. Paper silos
have been replaced by digital silos
and these silos are growing faster
than ever, creating a rising tide of
digital evidence that’s increasingly
challenging to collect, analyze and
share.
For police departments, this is
creating a big problem. There’s so
much data, coming from so many
silos that it’s becoming increasingly
difficult for investigators to ingest it,
correlate it, and absorb the relevant
facts of a case.
Put another way, the growing variety
and volume of digital evidence
has outpaced the tools investigators
have to collect, analyze and share it.
While CCTV video has certainly
taken off, the spectrum of digital
evidence is far wider. Think of all
of the abundantly available sources
of digital evidence that address
many of the questions investigators
once labored to answer. There’s
in-car video, interview recordings,
crowd-sourced information (like
citizen tips, photos, and videos),
911 recordings, and information
from other systems, like Automatic
License Plate Recognition
(ALPR), Computer Aided
Dispatch (CAD), and Records
Management Systems
(RMS). There are also
body-worn cameras, which
are being adopted by police
departments in growing
numbers.
With digital evidence
growing exponentially and
coming from more places,
it’s clear that police departments
need better tools so they can
leverage all of the available digital
evidence to improve case solvability
and reduce crime rates.
Collecting evidence:
the conundrum
Consider how investigators gather
evidence and build cases today.
They often have to log on to a dozen
or more systems to collect evidence
and then manually search for connections
in cases, which wastes time
and increases the likelihood that
crucial evidence will be missed.
Even though CCTV is now commonplace
in investigations, collecting
it is still incredibly time
consuming. It’s not uncommon for
a detective to physically drive to
a crime scene to canvas for video
cameras. The cameras can be hard to
spot, especially in high rises where
they’re not always visible. When
video is located, the investigator
then needs to download a copy and
bring it back to the station.
Despite the fact that citizens are
readily willing to share it, departments
also lack scalable solutions
for crowdsourcing evidence. According
to a recent Nielsen survey
recently conducted by NICE, 95
percent of Americans polled said
they’d be willing to share pictures,
videos, tips, or other evidence if
they witnessed a crime or serious
incident, providing they were given
an easy means to do so.
Still, too many police departments
don’t provide an easy way for citizens
to submit photos, video or tips.
They don’t have the systems or the
infrastructure to readily accept this
evidence for everyday investigations,
and especially for large-scale
events.
Investigators also waste incredible
amounts of time emailing, phoning,
filling out paperwork, even driving
from place to place to manually
collect digital evidence. All of
this evidence is then painstakingly
copied and saved on CDs, DVDs or
USB drives, and added to paper case
folders.
How new digital investigation
and evidence management
technology can help
New digital investigation and evidence
management technology is
now helping to break down these
barriers by enabling police departments
to seamlessly connect all of
their digital silos through one application.
The technology provides
a one-stop shop for gathering evidence
so investigators don’t have to
waste time logging on to all of the
individual systems to manually collect
evidence to build their cases.
In addition to simplifying access,
the technology is able to search
across all connected systems and
recommend evidence that is potentially
relevant to the case.
Advanced content analytics make
both structured and unstructured
data sources searchable. This includes
audio recordings, databases,
narratives from CAD comments,
incident reports, FI cards, reports,
documents, and more. This means
that investigators can uncover connections
and generate new leads,
which ultimately helps them solve
cases faster.
An investigator also has the ability
to add key words to a search.
Let’s say, for example, a witness in
a homicide investigation said they
saw a panel van with ‘Joe’s Plumbing’
marked on the side, fleeing the
scene. By adding ‘Joe’s Plumbing’
to a key word search, all connected
sources – from incident reports in
the CAD system to tagged crime
scene photos and witness statements
– would be searched for those
two key words.
In addition to searching docu-
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ments and databases, the technology
can convert audio to text to
make it searchable, so for example,
911 calls and interview room recordings
could be searched for the
words ‘Joe’s Plumbing’ as well. All
the investigator would need to do is
review the suggested evidence, and
select it to add it to a virtual case
folder.
Investigators can also initiate and
track evidence requests using built
in workflows, and receive automatic
notifications when those requests
are fulfilled. This makes it easier for
an investigator to stay on top of active
cases, while not losing track of
evidence or leads.
Furthermore, citizens can submit
video, photos and tips through a secure
public portal. Private businesses
can also use the portal to register
their CCTV cameras and provide
contact details, making it easier for
law enforcement agencies to crowdsource
evidence. By geo-locating
both city-owned and private CCTV
cameras, the technology enables investigators
to look at the area where
a crime occurred and know where
cameras are located, minimizing
time spent canvassing for video.
The technology is also cloudbased
so it can scale to growing evidence
storage requirements if there’s
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