Public safety technology: Steps forward and key challenges solved in 2022

Axon’s mission has always been: Protect Life.

All of our technology is brought to the market as a potential solution for real problems and pain points you and other public safety professionals experience. Our goal is always that this technology will improve safety for everyone.

There is a lot of research, development, and customer feedback that goes into each new product we develop and release, and the work doesn’t stop after launch. We receive exceptional recommendations from users — both current and potential — on how to make our products and services more reliable each day, and we are constantly releasing product updates and upgrades as well as new pieces of our ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at what you and your peers helped us accomplish this year.

Integration: The Axon Ecosystem and partner technologies

Our customers leverage a wide variety of incredible public safety technology around the world, and they often express how important it is that our technology works well with other vendors. This is why, for years, we’ve done things like provided Partner APIs for Axon Evidence and created standard file formats with our BWV cameras, with the goal of making Axon Evidence as interoperable as possible.

We’ve continued to make considerable advancements in this area in 2022, with a focus on greatly expanding the Axon partner network. Our collection of integrated solution offerings can be described as the Axon Ecosystem.

Think of the Ecosystem as a suite of connected devices, software, services and strategic partners. By weaving together these solutions, we expand the capability of each and provide public safety professionals with the resources they need to protect communities and accelerate justice.

After all, a crisis can unfold in an instant. When events occur where each second saved can save lives, public safety officers need a way to get eyes in the field faster. Our Axon Respond platform for greater situational awareness is a key piece to the solution. Originally created for live maps, alerts, and streaming of Axon cameras, we’ve expanded the platform in 2022 to include critical data and video feeds from our key technology partners.

We partnered with and invested in Fūsus, the market leader in real-time crime center solutions for public safety. This partnership makes it easier and more cost-effective for communities to aggregate live feeds from public and private video sources such as CCTV cameras, and other key data and signals, providing public safety teams with rich context on developing situations in the field.

We also launched an Axon Respond integration with RapidSOS, which enables 999 operators that use RapidSOS Jurisdiction View software platform to see live locations and view live-stream video of first responders equipped with Axon Body 3 cameras.

Support: Customer aid through major events

2022 saw the sad passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and public safety forces in the UK mobilised to keep the funeral proceedings safe and secure in the largest policing operation in recent memory. As multiple forces joined the Metropolitan Police Service in a large-scale mutual aid operation, we at Axon were committed to doing our small part.

Axon had the opportunity to supply equipment for mutual aid officers to ensure that technology remained reliable throughout the proceedings. As officers were on the ground keeping mourners safe, we kept our team on standby to support any incidents that required immediate TASER energy weapon or body-worn video (BWV) offload.

Through dedication, partnership, and positive attitudes from all involved, Operation London Bridge was a success. We were grateful to have been able to play a small role in this momentous achievement by law enforcement in the UK.

Management: 3rd party video playback, Upload XT 2.0 and Axon Investigate

It’s no secret that both the size and the quantity of digital evidence is growing.

Video cameras are everywhere today – one study estimates that there are over 1 billion security cameras worldwide.

Our upcoming Digital Evidence Trends report found that 64% of forensic video experts have encountered a case with more than 100 video files, and 36% of them have experienced a case with over 1,000 video files. Video files can require a large amount of storage space, especially when recorded in high-definition.

And video isn’t the only type of digital evidence requiring a storage and management solution. The average cell phone extraction, for instance, is 128 GB.

We asked users what keeps them from saving and storing all of their evidence inside their digital evidence management system, and they highlighted several challenges:

1. They don’t have enough storage/the cost of storage is too high to store everything in one place
2. There is a lack of playback ability for different file types
3. The data upload speed is too slow

We decided to tackle all three of these challenges in 2022. Here are our solutions:

Enhanced 3rd party video playback

Forces can load thousands of different file types into Axon Evidence where they will automatically be converted to a standard format file that maintains every single pixel from the original. We continue to add more format capabilities with each release, so this capability is only getting better. These third-party videos can easily be viewed or shared from Axon Evidence. Flexible storage plans allow all different types of evidence to be stored in Axon Evidence without breaking the bank.

Upload XT Version 2

The update to our original Upload XT software, Upload XT Version 2 offers up to 10x faster upload speeds, and the file size limit has grown nearly 4x, from 400GB to 1.5TB. Want to migrate lots of different files? You can also maintain your folder structure inside of cases when you upload.

Check out this video to learn more about how you can manage all types of evidence with efficient upload speeds in Axon Evidence.

Axon Investigate

With the massive amount of digital evidence captured each and every day, officers and barristers need a means to properly playback more video files without altering the original file.

In the past, video evidence was primarily handled by forensic specialists. While forensic experts will always play an important role in video-centric investigations, the overwhelming amount of evidence means that more and more officers are reviewing video. In fact, the digital evidence trends survey found that 86% of officers are viewing video and 76% of cases include video evidence.

We wanted to give officers the tools they needed to watch video, and to ensure they were watching it in an efficient and forensically sound way. The new Axon Investigate was built by a team of certified forensic video analysts to provide investigators with a means to view and share accurate digital evidence that is ready for court.

Get a high-level view of Axon Investigate by watching here

Trust: Never Miss a Moment

One of the biggest challenges facing police today is a lack of trust between police and the public. This is a complicated issue to address, but some key pieces to the solution we have heard from agencies are effective and efficient means of capturing and reviewing calls for service on camera.

Never Miss a Moment

Capturing and protecting truth is key to building trust. So, to help forces and communities ensure that critical moments are always captured and stored, we introduced the Never Miss a Moment framework.

There are 4 key components forces should focus on to never miss a moment:

• Reliable cameras
• Proper policy
• Compliance safeguards
• Fallback

Video Recall

Our “fallback” feature is called Video Recall. This is a camera setting in the Axon Body 3 camera that allows forces to recover a recording that was never actually “recorded,” a moment that otherwise would have been lost forever. This feature provides careful controls, permissions and strict privacy protection for forces, officers and the public.

Priority Ranked Video Audit (PRVA)

Priority Ranked Video Audit (PRVA) within Axon Performance leverages auto-transcribe to review all BWV videos and identify videos that should be prioritised for review based on specific terms or phrases. PRVA allows supervisors to make the biggest impact with less time.

Thank you

A lot can happen in one year, and while we are really proud of the advancements we’ve collectively made in 2022, we know the work is not finished, and it’s not time to slow down.

We have some exciting things planned for 2023, all of which were inspired by you. You and your peers are our greatest asset. Without you, our mission to protect life would cease to make strides.

Have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year.