Cops in Naperville, Ill., Streamline Video Evidence Process

Like police agencies everywhere, the Naperville, Ill., Police Department uses video to record interrogations of potential suspects. That used to mean manually starting and stopping the video during interrogations and subsequently manually managing all of that digital evidence. That changed when the department deployed the cloud-based Genetec Clearance, which allows them to record and store the video evidence and then easily call it up when needed.

“There were a lot of hours spent recording interviews, burning copies onto CDs and submitting those disks into evidence,” said Matt Egan, commander of the Investigations Division at Naperville PD. “If we needed to retrieve the CDs to review the interrogations, we’d have to submit a request to the Property and Evidence team. Sometimes there could be delays because authorized individuals from our Property and Evidence Section are not always available on the weekends.”

The department wanted to move away from CDs for storage because of a concern for evidence security. As it began modernizing its six interrogation rooms, it needed a more efficient and secure way to manage digital evidence, thus the deployment of Genetec Clearance.

The department has also used Genetec Clearance to launch a Community Camera Registration Program, where businesses and residents can voluntarily enroll in the program and share their video. Each video camera is plotted on a map within the platform, allowing detectives to quickly locate sources if a crime occurs within the vicinity.