Police are working with new evidence management software hoping to meet the tight disclosure deadlines set by the courts.
Joanna Jacobs, the director of support services with the North Bay Police Service made a presentation about the new technology during the recent October Police Board meeting at police headquarters on Tuesday.
The new software from www.evidence.com will allow technicians to synchronize video from multiple police cruisers and sources at one investigation.
"The amount of evidence that we have to process is only going to increase. So at least by leveraging evidence.com we recognize that increase is coming, and hopefully we can eventually either keep up to it or maybe even get ahead of it," said Jacobs.
"We live in a digital world, and as more and more applications come out, as people are taking videos on their cell phone, people are deploying dash cams, CCTV footage in their own homes or businesses. It's only going to increase."
The program will also assist officers in other ways such as transcribing reports and witness interviews.
Mike Daze, North Bay's deputy chief, believes this technology should not be reserved only for large police services.
"We see ourselves as a mid-sized service that's working to stay ahead of the game and that technology, and it's great for being able to bring in the most evidence you can," said Daze.
"But again, all that data and all that information that comes in means it has to be reviewed and kicked back out, and at this point, that's still human resources, so we still need a lot of people to be able to process that information. So it doesn't mean our service backs away from embracing that. It just means that we start pivoting, and how do we best leverage that and then have the back end to support the police service, which ultimately promotes community safety."
Jacobs believes the new digital system saves costs, maintains a chain of custody, and facilitates easier sharing with other agencies.
"So for us, we get to get rid of the antiquated DVDs, CDs, CDs, paper copy, printing photographs," she explained.
"So it saves money on that back end, but more for us, it's digitized. So we have a log, we can maintain chain of custody of evidence, and it's just easier to share with other agencies this way."
Jacobs admits there will be a learning curve for officers but she believes it will benefit the service in the long run.
"You ask the officers that up front, I'm sure they would have some trepidation about learning a new system and uploading all of the evidence that they come across during the day," she said.
"But I would say, instead of asking an officer to review this video and make sure that this transcription I typed is accurate or something like that, the tools make the process faster. So in the end, I think, you'll see the payoff, but at the beginning, I could see how they may be a little bit concerned about learning this whole new process, but it is very simple. The training packages that Axon provides are also helpful, and our clerks are very patient in teaching them that process."
Jacobs says they are still looking to hire more part-time and full-time staff to work with the new Digital Evidence Management systems.
