I work as a systems engineer in the police body worn camera (BWC) industry, but not the company supply's the camera fielded by Minooka PD. My days are spent explaining encryption, the cloud, training police officers on how to use BWC, and how to make the perfect omelette. One of the biggest challenges when it comes to BWCs, is the sheer amount of data created, not just from a management perspective e.g., how do you index and find evidence, and clearly and very importantly how you handle public records requests.
In most states citizens can request most information like the video(s) an officer might have recorded while giving out a ticket. If the digital evidence management system (DEMS) used to manage the video isn't sophisticated, the department ends up having to resort to burning CDs or sharing the stat using some other means - though this sounds easy enough. But the volume of these requests can be significant. There are more efficient ways to share digital evidence, and I'm not quite sure how this system accomplished this task, but at a 20 person agency, this could have been an overwhelming burden. You would literally have to hire a single person just to sit there all day and respond to these requests, and the reality is that most police departments have to make a decision: hire more police officers, buy a new patrol car, or another person just to respond to public record requests.
That's why it's critical for not only the public but more importantly the end user police departments to understand the back end solution to make this tidal wave of digital evidence easy to search, redact and manage.
Sadly one agency's bad experience can make the entire system of body worn cameras seem like it doesn't work. As the adage says, you often get what you pay for and in this case this clearly seems to be a system that does not work well in the end.
Meanwhile, we have a solution that's working for nearly four thousand agencies.U
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Managing Digital Evidence Is A Challange
Copying over from my FB comment:
I work as a systems engineer in the police body worn camera (BWC) industry, but not the company supply's the camera fielded by Minooka PD. My days are spent explaining encryption, the cloud, training police officers on how to use BWC, and how to make the perfect omelette. One of the biggest challenges when it comes to BWCs, is the sheer amount of data created, not just from a management perspective e.g., how do you index and find evidence, and clearly and very importantly how you handle public records requests.
In most states citizens can request most information like the video(s) an officer might have recorded while giving out a ticket. If the digital evidence management system (DEMS) used to manage the video isn't sophisticated, the department ends up having to resort to burning CDs or sharing the stat using some other means - though this sounds easy enough. But the volume of these requests can be significant. There are more efficient ways to share digital evidence, and I'm not quite sure how this system accomplished this task, but at a 20 person agency, this could have been an overwhelming burden. You would literally have to hire a single person just to sit there all day and respond to these requests, and the reality is that most police departments have to make a decision: hire more police officers, buy a new patrol car, or another person just to respond to public record requests.
That's why it's critical for not only the public but more importantly the end user police departments to understand the back end solution to make this tidal wave of digital evidence easy to search, redact and manage.
Sadly one agency's bad experience can make the entire system of body worn cameras seem like it doesn't work. As the adage says, you often get what you pay for and in this case this clearly seems to be a system that does not work well in the end.
Meanwhile, we have a solution that's working for nearly four thousand agencies.U