Police Video Evidence Has Become An Accessible Resource

Police Video Evidence Has Become An Accessible Resource

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Body cameras can enhance the capabilities of law enforcement teams in finding evidence and solving crimes rapidly, but is this documentation accessible enough to the servicemen? Now, the combination of body cameras and cloud services may increase the efficiency of policemen.

Police officers in London have upgraded their systems using Microsoft’s Azure cloud service to store and review millions of hours of footage filmed on officers’ body cameras.

Around 22,000 police men and women from 32 boroughs received wearable video cameras so they can automatically record criminal acts, helping with prosecutions.

As reported on digitalbydefaultnews, the footage will be uploaded to the cloud service, where officers can study it and use it in court.

The technology can also be used to protect the officers themselves. A pilot phase saw a 93% reduction in the number of complaints made against police who were wearing the cameras, which are known as Body-Worn Video (BWV) and have been developed by Microsoft partner Axon.

“With the rollout of BWV, the Metropolitan Police Service is now a world leader in the use of technology as part of our daily commitment to help us fight crime,” Superintendent Adrian Hutchinson, from the Metropolitan Police Service, said. “The technology will also show our officers at their best, dealing with difficult and dangerous situations every day.”

Last month, all neighborhood and response officers in the capital were given BWV, which are roughly the size of a cigarette packet and attach to the shoulder area of a vest. Costing nearly £10m, the move made the Met the biggest user of the technology of any police force in the world.

The Met has said that the cameras aid for quicker case solving and have been particularly successful in domestic abuse incidents. The force added there had been a rise in guilty pleas from offenders who know their actions have been recorded.

Officers can use BWV to record their entire shift, and the footage will be automatically uploaded to Azure when the device is docked at a police station.