Police get technology makeover with body-worn video and evidence management to fight crime

05 Nov 09

By Nicholas Smith

New technology for managing electronic evidence is setting the agenda for body-worn video, says Nicholas Smith of Scyron...

Body-worn video (BWV), ‘the physical wearing of video cameras, has been in existence for optical evidence gathering’ since 2005.

It is used by such organisations as the British Transport Police at sporting events to track hooligans travelling to football matches, in emergency vehicles to tackle car crime through to police officers recording common assaults on the beat.

However, until recently there were significant challenges with the sheer volume of footage drawing a parallel with the birth of CCTV. A huge amount of data was generated but no one knew exactly how to turn that into meaningful intelligence and evidence.

For example, it was no good capturing what could be useful evidence if it wasn’t permissible in court. All this is changing, though, with new technology to bridge the gap from gathering data to create effective, electronic evidence management.

How can body-worn video help 21st century law enforcement?

BWV is used in four areas:

1) Reactive incidents to record a fight in a pub or a domestic dispute

2) Crime scene management – for example capturing the scene of a murder to give clues to find the perpetrator

3) Intelligence – such as recording who a suspected drug dealer is associating with in order to provide leads of enquiry

4) Training where BWV can give insight into improving how security or police officers handle different conflict situations.

Just the visibility of body-worn video acts as a deterrent. ISS Mediclean found that, during an eight-week BWV trial to record incidents at the Chelsea & Westminster hospital, the visible use of BWV reduced incidents of verbal abuse by 60 per cent and incidents of aggression by 29 per cent.

However, the ‘coming of age’ for BWV is technology to process and manage in a highly-efficient manner the huge amount of footage generated.

For example, Derbyshire Constabulary has used our DEMON Body Worn Video Manager to pioneer and automate the all-important administration and back-office system. We believe this is creating a blueprint for police services across the world.

The over-riding benefit of BWV linked to evidence management is what many police officers term ‘fast justice’. By having undisputable, electronic evidence at first hand to show to a defendant, means that in nine out of 10 cases they will change their plea from ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty’.

This saves an inordinate amount of time for law enforcement and security officers – freeing up their time for front line security. In fact, little BWV footage is shown in Court as its impact is so overwhelming as evidence.

Also, now that BWV can be integrated into electronic evidence management, it gives a potent weapon in addition to mobile phone and CCTV footage through to maps and static photography. This provides useful intelligence and a more complete picture with which to present to juries and facilitate convictions.

The way forward: one standard for video-evidence management

The real opportunity with BWV, not to mention CCTV, lies in creating a single standard for evidence management in policing. This would propel the benefits of faster justice as well as lower costs by making use of economies of scale.

Another poll out at the end of October 2009 – this time from the ‘Big Brother Watch,’ (a campaign from the founders of the Tax Payer's Alliance) – highlighted concerns about surveillance.

Out of 1,353 adults, 45 per cent of respondents 'strongly agreed' with the statement "that our freedoms are being eroded by a Big Brother state”. With this in mind, as an industry, we need to keep innovating in such areas as BWV and electronic evidence management, and demonstrate its value in reducing crime.

Only by doing this, will we increase public confidence that technology such as CCTV and BWV are vital weapons in our armoury to create a safer society where Big Brother need not be watching you.

Derbyshire Constabulary creates ‘blueprint’ for next generation body worn video

Since October 2008, a total of 75 officers (including Police Community Support Officers) have been trained to use miniature cameras on their headbands and/or jackets, in what is the world’s first software-based BWV administration and evidence management system.

This has proved very popular, particularly in helping to secure convictions for ‘volume crime’ such as assault, public disorder and domestic violence.

An officer starting a shift simply scans their ID card with a handheld barcode scanner (similar to those found in supermarkets). This tells the system which officer has what BWV equipment and memory card.

At the end of the shift an officer again uses the barcode scanner to check in the equipment. Then they download the video footage via a memory card reader into the computer system.

From a drop-down menu, the officer next decides if the footage is relevant evidentially. A mouse click enables a DVD to be burned which is automatically labelled with key information and printed with the Police Service’s crest.

The system can then create a statement to accompany the video evidence. The statement is pre-populated with the officer’s details (held on the system and identified by the ID barcode), the date and time their shift began and when the footage was taken. All the officer has to do is enter some incident-related details.

“The technology is helping us enormously, enabling us to be more efficient in securing convictions as well as saving officers a huge amount of time,” said sergeant David Stafford, “whereas an arrest statement could take 1-2 hours to prepare, the video evidence and statement is prepared in around 10 minutes.”

Once the data is downloaded the memory card is automatically wiped clean for repeat use.

The video and audio on the system is kept and automatically erased in accordance with Home Office evidence rules, to comply with the management of police information. Also, the system is tamper-proof and records a full audit trail each time footage is accessed.

This is proving a major deterrent and reducing time spent by officers on paperwork by more than 30 per cent.

“Whilst we cannot claim to put more officers on the streets with this technology, we can say that officers using it spend more time on patrol and less time writing statements,” said Graham McLaughlin, chief inspector, Derbyshire Constabulary.

An unforeseen benefit of using BWV is a reduction in complaints against officers. In the past, most complaints relate to alleged abusive or heavy-handed behaviour. Derbyshire Constabulary has not registered a single complaint against an officer wearing a BWV device.

Credits :

Nicholas Smith is business development & operations director at Scyron