Technology and equipment

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: The complexity of policing challenges is ever-evolving. In this article, we discuss how we made strides, with your feedback, to strengthen the Axon ecosystem in 2022 to help solve pain points and offer better support for positive policing outcomes.

ANALYSIS: With inspectorate reports highlighting concerns over the use of anti-rip clothing in police custody, the Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA) recently undertook a pilot project with Dyfed Powys Police to improve the monitoring, recording and risk assessments around the use of such clothing, with a long-term aim of ending the measure altogether, as ICVA Interim Chief Executive Sherry Ralph explains.

FEATURE: Despite several examples of terrorist attacks being livestreamed and online games being used to spread extreme propaganda and groom young fanatics, Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth warns that the full extent of the terrorist use of the internet remains poorly understood by many frontline practitioners, and a multi-faceted, holistic approach is essential to tackle the threat.

OPINION: Law enforcement agencies around the world often rely heavily on eyewitness testimony, but unreliable eyewitness evidence is often a contributing factor in miscarriages of justice; Dr Michel Funicelli a Lecturer in Police Studies at Teesside University and a 33-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, believes new technology analysing brainwaves could be a significant asset for policing in assessing the credibility of witnesses.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Ensuring a safe community and supporting victims of crimes are core missions of Merseyside Police. But as digital evidence continued to grow, Merseyside Police’s investigative resources were stretched to the limit. The force found a solution to all of these challenges in NICE Investigate. NICE Investigate collapses Merseyside’s digital evidence silos into a single login, so investigators can do all of their work in one place, and it eliminates long wait times for evidence. Now, cases can be resolved successfully and sooner.

FEATURE: ‘Hybrid’ threats, which aim to exploit a country’s vulnerability by undermining fundamental democratic values and liberties, look set to pose a growing challenge to both society and law enforcement, yet rarely receive a policing focus; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at EU collaborative attempts to address those threats.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: London’s Metropolitan Police Service now shares 600% more digital evidence with the CPS than in initial rollout. Learn how Axon Evidence helps facilitate efficient sharing for faster investigations.

ANALYSIS: Police adoption of live facial recognition (LFR) is a controversial topic, with the profound opportunities offered by this technology balanced out by considerable risks. A recent report from Cambridge University’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy presents a highly critical view of how the police use LFR. In this article, Policing Insight’s James Sweetland presents both sides of the story.

FEATURE: Steve Franklin, Executive Director at managed IT services and audio-visual specialist Cinos, explores the key considerations for designing, developing and maintaining police control rooms, and the role technology plays to allow vital monitoring systems to continue supporting policing around the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

INTERVIEW: In the latest in a series of interviews with leading figures involved in the research and investigation of organised crime, Policing Insight’s Chris Allen spoke to Dr Nicholas Gilmour, Financial Crime Advisor, about the changing nature of organised crime, the fact that it is a fluid, global organised phenomenon that is neither static nor predictable, and how the growth of organised crime is out of control.

INNOVATION: As forces across England and Wales strive to hit ambitious recruitment targets, they also face the challenge of new recruits now outnumbering more experienced officers’ Paul Roberts, Head of Product Strategy and Innovation, Public Safety at NEC Software Solutions; believes new technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics could play a vital role in upskilling new recruits as quickly as possible.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Registration has opened for the 2023 annual British APCO Conference and Exhibition, which is the leading public safety communications technology event in the UK and supported by Policing Insight as media partner.

ADVERTISMENT FEATURE: The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) oversees the police complaints system in England and Wales. They investigate the most serious matters, including deaths following police contact, and set the standards by which the police should handle complaints. The IOPC wanted to make it as easy and seamless as possible for police forces to share information and evidence with IOPC investigators. To address this and other challenges, the IOPC implemented NICE Investigate.

ANALYSIS: The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to bring significant changes to policing tools and techniques; Dr Jonathan Jackson and Ronald Winch of Birmingham City University argue that, as legislation lags behind the pace of technological development across society, policing needs to urgently develop and implement ethical and safe systems of governance to protect the model of policing by consent.

ANALYSIS: One of the outcomes of the pandemic has been a quiet revolution in the way people seek to report crime; a survey by technical consulting firm BMT found that the public are increasingly willing to use digital contact channels to communicate with police, but need more information about the right routes to use, and reassurances over the response they will receive, as Justice and Security Business Unit Lead Christian Ellis explains.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: In August 2021 HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS), the College of Policing and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published a report in response to the super-complaint submitted by the Centre for Women’s Justice on the police use of protective measures in cases involving violence against women and girls (VAWG). Razi Hassan of the Domestic Abuse Alliance reviews the recommendations set out in the report and explains how the WEPROTECT instant victim referral service accelerates access to legal assistance and intervention.

ANALYSIS: With the ever-increasing volume of online child sexual abuse material, identifying and removing these harmful and often horrific images will require the use of new digital tools; at the recent 24-hour Conference on Global Organized Crime, Jacques Marcoux, Director of Research and Analytics for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, outlined how Project Arachnid is delivering on this task, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

OPINION: The ever-complex nature of policing continues to highlight the need for sharing and analysing data, with interoperability crucial to successful technological development; Sebastian Uhlig, Managing Consultant of Informed Solutions, explores the key ingredients required to ensure that digital transformation is accelerated and de-risked to improve the working lives of police officers, and enhance their service to the public.

FEATURE: Australia’s Queensland Police, like many other forces around the world, deal with worrying levels of domestic violence on a daily basis, with many incidents carried out by repeat offenders; but the introduction of a simple text messaging initiative to remind those subject to protection orders about the behaviour conditions they are required to follow has seen a significant drop in repeat offences and an associated reduction in costs, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

ANALYSIS: This month’s ANZPAA Conference offered another opportunity to learn more about brain fingerprinting, and the potential for its use in law enforcement investigations and deception detection; Policing Insight’s Andrew Staniforth looks at the background to this cutting-edge technology, research on its operational performance to date, and how it could benefit policing and criminal justice systems moving forwards.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Policing performance has never been under the microscope as much as it is now. There are some police forces that have been placed under special measures by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS). In reviewing these findings, we can identify common themes in each of the areas in which policing is still considered to be underperforming.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Recent studies of the use and impact of, for example, body-worn video (BWV) cameras, have produced inconclusive results, or the reporting is strictly quantitative – all about statistics and numbers, and less about the human experience of officers and the public. So we at Axon supported an independent study by Crest Advisory, a leading consultancy in the UK policing, justice and public safety sectors, to assess the impact of enabling technologies on Cumbria’s constabulary.

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Integration and data are at the very core of Police work, ensuring information is accessible by the right people at the right time through the most appropriate channel. In this article we will discuss how Forces can unlock the power of their data to deliver key policing outcomes.

FEATURE: Law enforcement around the world has relied increasingly on DNA as a crucial tool in solving crime; but without specific production standards to protect against the contamination of crime scenes, killers could have escaped justice while innocent people faced conviction and even execution, as Will Paton, Marketing Manager for scene-of-crime technology specialists RollsTechGlobal, explains.