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International technology and services for police and national security
Issue 3 august/september 2012
policeproductinsight.com
POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
ISSN 2050-5329
SURVEILLANCE
PLATFORM
Aviation units seek to
maximise their value
COUNTRY FOCUS
Bridging the technology gaps in
Australian law enforcement
POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
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POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
Features
c o v e r F e at u r e
tHe sky is tHe limit
web oF intrigue
22
H a r d ta r g e t
38
POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
It makes perfect sense to spin together the
many digital threads of the UK’s criminal
justice system, yet progress remains slow.
Gary Mason examines the sticking points
24
As police forces consider how to protect
the public from the nightmare scenarios
of terrorist attacks and rioting, Gary Mason
finds out how heavily armoured vehicles
could hold the key
P rot e c t w H o s e rv e
6-16
POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
Crime prediction tool pilot successful
41
Romania increases border security
POLICE
PRODUCT INSIGHT
Global initiative takes on cyber criminals
Data integration to enhance policing
42
Latent fingerprinting must be improved
Simulators provide officers with a chance
to gain experience of dangerous situations
without being put in harm’s way Gary
Mason examines the recent innovations
42
P ro d u c t s
18-20
viewPoint
c o u n t ry F o c u s
t H e g r e at d i v i d e
news
Call routing to Tetra radio handsets
As officer deaths from shootings rise in the
US, the Department of Justice has tasked
forces with establishing clear policies on
wearing body armour, writes Gary Mason
t r a i n i n g d ay
24
International technology and Aerial
services
for policeisand
nationaltosecurity
surveillance
invaluable
police operations, but can the huge costs
be brought down? Gary Mason examines
how forces around the world are tackling
the problem
32
With its population mostly concentrated in
coastal cities split by large distances across
a huge landmass, Australian police face a
unique challenge. Gary Mason looks at how
technology is bridging the gaps
Editor Gary Mason
Advertising Sales Manager
Kelly Morris +44 (0) 1737 648430
kellym@policeoracle.com
Commercial Director Ian Barrett
+44 (0) 1737 648435
ianb@policeoracle.com
Art Editor David Devonport
07902 812377
Human traFFicking
31
c at a n d m o u s e
46
Joanne Taylor discusses the ways in which
technology can be applied to tackle one of
the world’s most heinous crimes
32
Mark Stevens explains how law enforcement has been handcuffed by a lack of
information when dealing with London
2012 Olympic crowds
Published by The NSI Group, publishers of
www.policeoracle.com. Darby House, 162 Bletchingley Road, Merstham, London RH1 3DN, UK
Copyright 2012 NSI (Online) Ltd – Articles published may not be reproduced in any form without
express permission of the Commercial Director
(Print) ISSN 2050-4713 (Online) ISSN 2050-5329
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2012
38
22
w w w. p o l i c e p ro d u c t i n s i g h t . c o m
+44 (0) 1737 648 991
comment
EdiTo r’s i n s i g h T
An enduring love of paperwork
T
he criminal justice system produces an enormous amount
of paper. It is the comfort blanket of due process clogging
up police desks, stuffed into lawyers’ briefs and wheeled
through court room corridors on laden trolleys. Which begs
the question – why this ingrained reliance on paper and hard
copy evidence?
Some of the explanation is historical and some of it procedural.
The criminal law relies on written statements, facts, testimonies
and artifacts of evidence that can be stored and retrieved while
the system turns at its own pace. This material may be required
weeks, months or years after a case has started or finished, so it is
vital that the record has a built in permanency. In most cases that
has required paper and ink.
But there are changes afoot and it has to be said, they are long
overdue. Court rooms and the criminal justice system requires
gravitas because depriving someone of their liberty for a long time
or setting them free when faced with serious charges is a very serious business. But that does not mean the whole system needs to
remain stuck in the era of powdered wigs and quill pens.
In the UK and Australia the move towards digital files is
moving at a fast pace. Within British policing, for example,
there have been some important recent milestones. All police
forces in England and Wales now have the authority to use
mobile devices to take electronic statements and electronic
signatures from witnesses either at the scene or by visiting
them in their homes.
This means that paper statements should become obsolete in
the next few years and police forces’ considerable investment in
mobile data capability should start paying dividends. This opens
up the possibility of even greater advances in the collection of
evidence that can be achieved through technology. For example,
a significant number of forces in Europe and the US are now
using body worn video cameras which are used to collect digital
evidence. If frontline officers are able to digitally record and store
every important encounter during the course of their shift is there
a need for written statements at all?
Of course, these type of step changes require a cultural as much
as a technological revolution. In Queensland, Australia where police have embarked upon an electronic briefs of evidence (EBOE)
project, they have found that in the court rooms older lawyers are
not embracing the project as much as the younger ones.
This shows the changes are still at an early stage. September
provides a number of major law enforcement forums in which these
issues will be discussed. The International Association of Chiefs of
Police (IACP) conference will take place in San Diego while Europe’s
GPEC conference takes place in Leipzig, Germany. Police Product
Insight will be at both events. We hope to see you there.
Gary Mason
We put digital evidence in the dock
DS Martin Vaughan, an Association of
Chief Police Officers (ACPO) approved
interview advisor with Gwent Police,
explains how digital technology enables
supervisors to quality control interviews
and critically review their content
Until recently, the majority of forces were
still conducting their interviews on oldstyle tape recorders that are fast becoming
obsolete. Historically, audio recording interviews was introduced in 1986 as part of
the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE)
1984 to increase transparency and avoid
allegations of mistreatment or coercion of
suspects. Later came the introduction of
video recordings for storing interviews and
evidence in certain cases.
Recognising the need for change, the
National Policing Improvement Agency
(NPIA) devised a best practice framework
for digital interview recording Gwent Police
uses the Online Digital Evidence System
(CODES) which includes voice and/or video
recording equipment, including microphones and cameras; an interview management console with either a touch screen or
keyboard and server based data storage for
quick and easy retrieval of interviews.
The fact that the interviews are easy to
store, play back and you can search them in
a matter of seconds means that supervisors
are better able to quality control interviews.
This is vital to ensure interviews can
withstand challenges by the defence and
help put a compelling case to the court. It
has also had a positive effect on the quality
of interview and officers’ performances, as
they now don’t have to stop their interviews
after 45 minutes to change a tape.
CODES can also enhance the evidence
management process as it allows officers
to attach key forensic information, such
as CCTV footage and other images, to the
interview file. This ensures a more joined
up approach and means that vital evidence
can be stored in one location and easily
shared with authorised personnel.
CODES complies with current and future
Management of Police Information (MoPI) directives, along with the two new (PACE Codes
of Practice, E and F. It can also play a vital role
in ensuring witnesses are able to present
their evidence to a court without appearing
in court in line with Special Measures.
The visual recording of witness interviews is an important service offered to
the vulnerable, who might otherwise feel
intimidated by being physically present in
court. Many trials are discontinued or fail
due to unreliabile witnesses. The fact the
technology is less intrusive can also ensure
witnesses feel more comfortable being
interviewed. There is also a mobile solution
that can enable investigators to conduct their
interviews in locations away from the police
station – leading to increased victim and
witness satisfaction and enhanced public
confidence in the criminal justice system.
w w w. p o l i c e p ro d u c t i n s i g h t . c o m News
IN BRIEF
Human identification system
IntegenX has launched its
RapidHIT Human Identification System at the new Key
Forensics Services (KFS) facility in Warrington, UK. KFS is
one of the early access sites
for the new system and will
be the first to provide Rapid
DNA identification capabilities to UK law enforcement.
The mobile, self-contained
system automates and accelerates the process of producing standardized DNA profiles
from buccal swabs and other
samples in under 90 minutes.
Mobile offender recognition
The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona has become the
first law enforcement agency
in the US to use BI2 Technologies’ mobile biometric identification platform during routine
patrols. Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System (MORIS) uses iris, fingerprint and facial recognition to
identify people. The Sheriff’s
Office bought 75 mobile units,
which use a handheld wireless
smartphone to provide officers
in the field with fast criminal
background checks.
NoRTH YoRKSHIRE PoLICE
Electric vehicles in Portugal
Portuguese police have purchased eight Nissan Leaf
electric vehicles. They will be
operated by Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP), which is
responsible for policing large
urban areas in the country.
According to Nissan, it is the
first police force in the world
to use a fleet of electric vehicles. They will be used primarily for the Safe School
programme, but will also be
outfitted for other roles.
Contact centre search engine
The New Zealand Police are
using Syl Semantics’ search
engine on the intranet of its
three 24/7 contact centres.
The specialist software uses
a customised dictionary of
commonly used police acronyms, synonyms and terms,
allowing staff to search using
their operational jargon.
UNiTEd KiNGdoM
North Yorkshire introduces call
routing to Tetra radio handsets
Non-emergency
calls can now be
redirected straight
to an officer’s
radio, allowing
cases to be dealt
with personally
North Yorkshire Police has introduced a Netcall messaging service that works with its Sepura
Tetra radios to enable better officer response to non-emergency incoming calls.
North Yorkshire Police is responsible for England’s largest
county. Its officers are frequently
required to attend incidents in
remote locations according to
Superintendent Glyn Payne, operational lead in the Tetra radio
implementation project.
When an officer is pursuing
a line of enquiry, for example,
pertinent facts often occur to
a witness after the officer has
The system leverages speech
recognition technology
departed. In one such instance
a member of public called the
new automated switchboard to
report new evidence and, with
the help of speech recognition
technology, the force was able
to route the call directly to the
hand-held Tetra radio of the officer they had met while they
were still in the neighbourhood.
Being able to report the new
evidence directly to their personal case officer, the victim
of crime received a personal
service.
“This innovative approach improves our service to the public,
and ultimately builds their confidence in the fact that their police services are responsive and
accessible,” adds Supt Payne.
“Our officers’ job satisfaction is greatly enhanced – they
are able to spend more time on
patrol and less time going back
and forth to their station. Such
an innovative system could
contribute to making mobile
phones redundant, with considerable time and cost-saving
implications.”
The technology allows the
radios to connect to the main
telephone system – providing
a simple way to contact officers
whilst they’re still on the beat.
When driving or dealing with
another case, they will receive
an automated message via ring
back to the TETRA radio from
the Netcall Voicemail service. To
ensure the public get the quality of service they need, any
unanswered queries are automatically escalated within the
system after 24 hours.
UNiTEd KiNGdoM
one third of forces join procurement hub
Thirteen of the 43 police forces
in the UK are now using a National Police Procurement Hub
– an electronic marketplace that
provides the police service with
the ability to select and purchase
a range of approved goods and
services online such as IT, body
armour and vehicles.
This Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) endorsed
initiative is being delivered by
the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in partnership with Procserve, a company
that provides electronic procurement products.
Initial set up of the National
Police Procurement Hub was
funded by the NPIA. Forces
started paying a subscription to
use the Hub at the start of the
financial year 2012/13.
The 13 forces using the Hub
are: the Metropolitan Police Service, Lincolnshire Police, West
Mercia Police, Thames Valley Police, Greater Manchester Police,
Kent Police, Durham Constabulary, Gloucestershire Constabulary, Norfolk Constabulary, Suffolk Constabulary, Dyfed Powys
Police, Gwent Police and South
Wales Police.
The Hub is expected to save
the service £69m over the next
six years by supporting collaboration across multiple forces and
reducing the cost of purchases
through their joint buying power
and managing suppliers better.
So far, 3,700 orders have been
placed through the Hub at a value of over £3.2m. There are more
than 900 suppliers on the Hub.
Lee Tribe, director of procurement for the Met, which recently
went live with the system said:
“The benefits for our suppliers
in automating the ordering process will enable them to avoid
re-keying Met orders into their
sales systems and speed up the
end to end process. Users within
Met have access to a greater variety of products and services
and faster delivery times.”
News
U N i T E d S TAT E S
Crime prediction tool pilot successful
A crime prediction tool has
been successfully piloted by the
Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD).
Several years ago, it challenged a team comprising two
mathematicians, a criminologist,
and an anthropologist to come
up with a way to prevent crime
before it happens. The result is
PredPol, designed to put police
on the scene before crime happens. It led to a 12 per cent drop
in crime in the Foothill Division
of Los Angeles and a 27 per cent
drop in crime in Santa Cruz.
PredPol plots areas on a patrol map where officers should focus
The program is built around
the same model for predicting
aftershocks following an earthquake. It shows officers what
could be coming based on simple, constantly calibrated data
on the location, time and type of
crime. It then creates prediction
boxes – as small as 500 square
feet – on a patrol map.
The system was devised by
Jeff Brantingham, an anthropology professor at the University of
California in Los Angeles. It uses
data is taken from repeat victims
of crime. He said that traditional
mapping tools are calibrated less
frequently, rely on humans to
recognize patterns, and allocate
resources based on past crimes
rather than predicted offenses.
So far, the program has been
implemented in five LAPD divisions covering 130 square miles
and roughly 1.3 million people.
In the Foothill Division, where
more than half of crimes are
property-related, around 170
patrol officers are spending a
total of about 70 hours a week
working in the prediction boxes.
LAPD Captain Sean Malinowski
said he envisions a time when the
police will issue crime forecasts
in the same way as the weather
service issues storm alerts.
PredPol data can be accessed
through any hand held mobile
data device and is run on a secure, cloud-based software-asa-service (SaaS) platform.
E U Ro P E
ChiNA
Steps toward sharing fingerprints
AFiS system aids
crackdown on
Chinese criminals
The Swedish National Police
Board (Rikspolisstyrelsen) is to
upgrade its automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS)
to one that complies with a European protocol promoting data
sharing between countries.
In the first European deployment of MorphoBIS, the Swedish National Police Board will
use the system for investigation,
identification and verification in
FiNGERPRiNT dATA
MORPHO (SAFRAN gROUP)
PREDPoL
Innovative new
software has been
shown to predict
crime before it has
actually happened
The Prüm treaty allows signatories to exchange identification data held at member state
level, such as DNA, fingerprint
and vehicle registration data. It
establishes a framework under
which police in states can interrogate each other’s databases
on a “hit or not-hit” basis. It is
now a key consideration within
EU government tenders.
law enforcement applications.
The system supplied by Morpho
(Safran group) is already used in
the United States and Canada.
The system complies with the
EU’s Prüm regulation, which allows police forces in the 30 signatory countries to compare and
exchange data more easily.
The European Council has
confirmed that a large majority
of member states will be able to
implement the Prüm decisions
and new AFIS systems are being
specified in some countries that
take into account the provisions.
Denmark has recently stated
its interest in acquiring an AFIS
capable of interfacing to Prüm.
The Danish National Police
says it plans to purchase a new
AFIS solution, including data
storage and advanced matching functionality.
Use of automated fingerprint
identification system (AFIS)
technology in China’s Anhui
province has significantly increased the hit rate on latent
fingerprint inquiries.
In March 2011, the province’s
Public Safety Authority launched
a large-scale AFIS to assist in
criminal investigations. Since
then, the suspect detection rate
on latent fingerprint inquiries has
increased more than tenfold.
The system has been supplied by NEC and is the largest
of its kind in China. It consists of
2,300 units that have produced
a database of more than 11 million registered fingerprints.
In March 2012, Anhui province came first in an annual Public Safety Authority study seeking to identify latent fingerprints
from unresolved cases.
News
Ro M A n i A
Romania increases border security
High-tech control
centre in Romania
seeks to tighten
border security
for Europe
Cassidian, the company
contracted to supply the
technology for the centre,
has installed fixed cameras
and radars on many locations
around the border, integrated
in local command centres.
The company has also sipplied a complex Tetra Professional Mobile Radio-communication network to nine
external border counties,
plus data and voice communications, as well as the infrastructure works that were also
a major part of the Romanian
effort.
The IT applications needed
to manage the operations at
the border, such as command
and control, risk analysis, elearning, automatic vehicle
location and the overall system management have all
been installed.
The centre integrates surveillance and training capabilities
UniTEd kinGdoM
chinA
Training centre
receives approval
Explosives detectors procurement
identification capabilities, operational applications for command and control with automatic vehicle location, threat
analysis at border crossings
and an e-learning environment for border guards.
Police in China are using handheld explosives detectors for
homeland security. Various
police departments and bomb
squads recently procured 11
Quantum Sniffer QS-H150 detectors supplied by US company
Implant Sciences’ in-country
distributor and service provider,
Beijing Ritchie Link.
Implant Sciences has been
selling explosives trace detection equipment in China since
The centre will also have a
secure Tetra mobile communication network, all functioning
over a highly reliable national
data and voice communication
system and supervised by an
umbrella management system.
2005, according to Darryl Jones,
vice-president of sales and marketing at the company.
The QS-H150 has a vortex
collector for the simultaneous
detection of explosives particulates and vapors with or without
physical contact. It can detect
parts-per-trillion (ppt) levels of
explosives vapor and nanogram
quantities of explosives particulates for most threat substances,
according to the company.
Eod SyMPoSiUM
Bomb disposal specialists
from several law enforcement
agencies have recently held
an EOD exercise in Florida to
test their latest equipment
and protocols. The day long
event was held at the University of Florida and was a way
for bomb teams to practice
their responses to threats.
FBI
One of the UK’s largest contractors is to build an officer safety training centre for
Thames Valley Police.
BAM Construction South East
has been awarded the £4.3m
contract for the facility on the
Thames Valley Police principle
training facility in Sulhamstead,
Berkshire.
As well as a dedicated facility
for safety training and fitness
assessments, it will have meeting, office and support rooms.
To deliver this specialist training there will be areas of the
centre with padded walls and
flooring, and capacity to deliver additional training.
It is being designed to reach
BREEAM excellence standards
and will embody sustainable design principles. Work is expected
to start in September 2012 and
take 12 months to complete.
CASSIDIAn
The Romanian Border Police
has opened once of the most
advanced control centres in
Europe to help protect the
longest land border in the EU
against illegal immigration,
smuggling, trafficking and the
threat of terrorism.
The 18,000m² building will
host the system data centre
and the national operational
dispatch centre.
The technology behind the
Romanian Border Security
project is an integrated system that includes surveillance,
enhanced recognition and
It has automatic and continuous self-calibration and monitors
the environment to sense changes that would affect its accuracy,
and re-calibrate accordingly.
For detection, the sample is
collected by the vortex, ionized
photonically, and analysed via
ion mobility spectrometry (IMS).
The presence of a threat is indicated by a visible and audible
alarm, and the substance is identified and displayed on the integrated LCD screen. A monitor and
keyboard can be connected for
convenient access to spectrogram
display and analysis and administrative tools and diagnostics.
When detecting a threat substance, the QS-H150 rapidly
alarms. Implant Sciences’ QSH150 portable explosives trace
detector has received Qualified
Anti-Terrorism Technology Designation by the US Department
of Homeland Security.
Biometric
Identification
Solutions
MobileID
LiveScan
Mugshot
3M Cogent, Inc.
+44 (0) 207 063 9770
CGTinfo@cogentsystems.com
www.cogentsystems.com
AFIS
a 3M Company
Registered in England and Wales No: FC028548 BR01047
VAT No: GB 976 6288 56
HOW DO YOU PLAN TO REDUCE YOUR SPEND?
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electronic fleet management solution.
To find out how visit Traka
at NAPFM stand 104
+44 (0)1234 712345 | traka.com
INTELLIGENT KEY AND ASSET MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
News
i n T E R n AT i o n A l
Global initiative takes on cyber criminals
Project 2020 seeks
to marshal the
world’s expertise
and resources to
break the back
of cybercrime
One of the largest international
consultations into cybercrime
has been launched to help governments, law enforcement and
businesses prepare to tackle future technological threats.
Project 2020, a study by the
International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (IACPA) and led
by Europol, will analyse current
trends in cybercrime and how
they could evolve over the next
eight years and beyond. The
study includes partners from
Europe, Far East Asia and Australia, and includes the Ministry of
Home Affairs (MHA) in Singapore.
The past two years have
seen the industrialisation of
cybercrime, where criminals
can draw on an entire supporting infrastructure of criminal
service providers – from web
hosting to generating credit
card verification data. There
has also been a sharp increase
of targeted cyber attacks on individuals, so-called “spearfishing”, according to the IACPA.
“During the past 24 months,
critical infrastructure in countries
around the world has been under daily cyber attack from both
organised criminal networks and
state-sponsored entities,” says
John Lyons, chief executive of
the International Cyber Security
Protection Alliance (ICSPA).
Europol expects these threats
to evolve rapidly. Dr Victoria Baines, strategic advisor on cybercrime at Europol, said: “Cloud
computing services mean that
we don’t always know to whom
we are entrusting our data. The
‘internet of things’ could see the
hacking of medical devices and
key infrastructure components.
“With two-thirds of the world
yet to join the internet, we can
expect to see new criminals,
new victims and new kinds of
threats.”
The project will combine
leading law enforcement agencies’ expertise with that of the
ICSPA’s members, organisations
and professional communities.
The European Commission recently designated Europol as its
information hub on cybercrime
and tasked the agency with
establishing the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). Also contributing to the study will be the
City of London Police and the
European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).
Among the businesses joining
Project 2020 are payment services firm Visa Europe, the UK’s largest home shopping retailer Shop
Direct Group, customer insight
and fraud prevention services
firm Transactis and logistics company Yodel. They will be joined by
seven of the world’s leading cyber security companies: McAfee,
CGI Canada, Atos, Cassidian, Digiware, Core Security Technologies
and Trend Micro.
It will also include the International Information System Security Certification Consortium
(ISC) and the International Association of Public Prosecutors.
U n i T E D S TAT E S
SALTUS TECHNOLOGIES
Digital ticketing system
rolled out across Kansas
Officers can print various tickets depending on the charge
10
An electronic ticketing system is
being offered to all law enforcement agencies in Kansas under
a state-wide contract.
The digiTICKET system is already being used by Kansas
Highway Patrol officers. Troopers opertate it on their in-vehicle
laptops and interface with the
agency’s KLER reporting system.
The system works via a web
application. Court scheduling
tools allow administrators to
schedule multiple dates and
times for up to a year in advance. The system automatically
advances court dates based on
docket size or days until the
next scheduled court date.
The system can print differently formatted tickets based on the
type of charge selected by the officer: parking tickets, traffic tickets
or code enforcement tickets.
A number of other states are
using the system developed by
Saltus Technologies, which last
year began offering it to agencies
as a service with no upfront costs.
According to the company nearly
40 per cent of its users procured
the system on this basis.
The program includes all the
hardware, software, training,
deployment support, software
maintenance, paper, hosting and
integration with existing RMS and
Court Systems for a monthly fee.
According to a recent independent survey of US police
departments conducted by Astute Marketing 80 per cent of
respondents’ agencies do not
have an eCitation system currently. The survey also showed
that 68 per cent of these say
they are planning to purchase
one in the future.
News
S PA i n
Data integration to enhance policing
The largest police force in Spain
is integrating 12 additional information sources into the operations management system
and police investigations system used by the force.
The Guardia Civil will be including investigative and administrative databases in support of police operations and
criminal investigations.
This will enhance the capabilities of both the operations
management system, SIGO,
and the police investigation
system used by the Guardia
The aim is to supply all officers with consistent data in real-time
Civil. Accenture will be providing
technology services and managing the transfer and integration
of the data through a secure IT
architecture.
According to Accenture, the
integration of new information sources into existing po-
licing systems will enable the
force to better manage, link
and analyse case information
and intelligence in real-time
across crime investigation, border management, emergency
response and day-to-day case
administration.
The data will also support
police investigations relating
to organised crime, missing
persons and drug trafficking
in Spain. Accenture will train
members of the Guardia Civil
to access the new information
sources to support their policing and investigative activities.
“The integration of new information sources into our policing operations and investigative systems will ensure that
high-quality data and consistent information is delivered
to our police force in real-time
to support policing activities
across Spain,” said D. Cándido
Cardiel, director of operations
at Guardia Civil. “This will reduce time-consuming back-office tasks and free up valuable
resources to focus on frontline
policing services and criminal
prosecutions.”
UniTED KinGDoM
UniTED KinGDoM
Air unit leverages remote tracking
innovative CCTV
project recognised
with tech award
West Midlands Police Air Operations are using a Tracker Check
system that allows officers to
remotely view information the
vehicle tracking system stores
on a stolen vehicle and the circumstances of its theft.
When a stolen vehicle alert is
received, the frequency of the
signal can be increased, making
tracking faster. The force recently recovered four stolen vehicles
GRAnD ThEfT AUTo
TRACKER
ISTOCKPHOTO
Spanish initiative
seeks to reduce
back office tasks
by supplying
high quality data
PC Alan Meredith, of West Midlands Police Air Operations Unit,
says: “Thanks to the timely activation of the system we recovered
approximately £98,000 worth of
vehicles before thieves could sell
them on or ship them abroad. Although the vehicles were unattended, so no arrests were made,
all vehicles have been recovered
for forensic examination.”
worth a total £98,000 in one hit
through using the Tracker stolen
vehicle recovery system.
A BMW X5 worth £35,000
was reported stolen overnight
from Edgbaston. It was fitted
with a Tracker device, which was
activated.
During the hunt for the BMW,
a report of three other stolen
vehicles from an address in
Olton, two of which were fit-
ted with the system, also came
in. The owners of the three cars
– a Range Rover Sport worth
£42,000, a Mercedes ML 350
Sport worth £11,500 and a Nissan Micra worth £9,000 – were
on holiday.
Luckily, a neighbour alerted
the police and in less than four
hours officers located the BMW
X5 and the three other vehicles
in Tyseley.
The CCTV operating team based
at the London Borough of Bexley won an award for Best Use of
Technology at the 2012 national
British Security Industry Association Security Personnel Awards.
Since March 2010, the borough has partnered with Siemens
and manning service specialist
Wilson James to outsource their
entire CCTV operation including management, staffing and
technology into a single contract
over a 10-year period.
11
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12
a n a ly s i s
e u rO p e
Open your eyes to a quicker picture
august/sEPtEMBER 2012
These modifications are likely
to fool hash sum based systems
leading to identifications being
missed. Videntifier does not have
this limitation and is designed to
handle any alterations.
A state-of-the-art multimedia database makes the identification process accurate and
efficient, even for large video
collections. In normal use on
modern hardware, the system
can inspect an hour of video
in less than a minute and with
greater accuracy than manual
identification. It can run continuously, day and night.
Extensive research with the
Icelandic police showed that
within a large reference collection of more than 70,000 hours
of video – Videntifier Forensic
identified the majority of material currently being distributed
over the internet.
Measurements performed by
investigators in Iceland on four
different hard drives, show that
more than 70 per cent of the material from their benchmark cases could be identified with this
collection. The reference collection is being grown even further
in order to increase the identification ratio of the service.
Research found that the technology is robust towards attacks
on the video contents through
common transformations, while
not detecting any false positives
in any of the experiments.
Gary Mason
Hard drives can be scanned for video footage within minutes
parison. These fingerprints cannot be reverse engineered back
into video files, therefore no illegal content is ever transmitted.
A summary report details
which videos have been identified as illegal and which must
be manually scanned. These can
then be classified to reduce the
work on future cases.
Once Videntifier has viewed a
video once and the fingerprints
have been uploaded to the central database it is able to identify multiple copies of the video
even when they have been severely altered by modifications
such as compression, cam rips,
subtitles and mirroring.
i d e n t i f i c at i O n r at e
Case 1
210 hours
%
100
5,000 hours in database,
November 2009
Case 2
196 hours
May 2012
Case 3
227 hours
February 2011
May 2011
80
60
40
88%
79%
80%
83%
77%
81%
77%
60%
0
72%
20
59%
veloped a tool that can enable
investigators to automatically
identify illegal video content
and digital images relating to
child abuse or terrorism in just a
few minutes. Videntifier Forensic
could save them from manually
trawling through hours of material, making it possible for the
first time for police to tackle the
billions of videos and images
being shared daily worldwide.
The software is installed on
a desktop computer. A simple
drag-and-drop interface enters
a file into the system, which
extracts a digital fingerprint
from the video. These are calculated by extracting a series
of points of interest, which are
then converted into a unique
series of 72 numbers. In this
way, around 80,000 fingerprints (less than 5 megabytes
combined) can be stored. The
database is already storing
more than 6 billion fingerprints and users of the system
can upload their own collected
video fingerprints.
In order to identify all video on
a hard drive, fingerprints are extracted from every video file and
sent via a secure internet channel
to the central database for com-
15%
Identifying videos of child abuse,
terrorism and hate speech on
computers, hard drives and CDs
is a tedious, time-consuming
and expensive task due to the
current manual processes, which
can also be very stressful to investigators viewing the often
disturbing content.
The internet has revolutionised the way we consume and
distribute video. Large-capacity hard drives are now cheap
while broadband connections
are fast and freely available. This
presents many challenges to investigators; consuming time and
resources.
The process of tracking down
the producers and distributors of
this illegal material has, in turn,
become an ever-growing focus
on the world’s law enforcement
agencies.
When officers suspect someone of distributing illegal material, they seize the suspect’s
computer and storage devices.
Copies are made to avoid tampering with original evidence.
Once these have been scanned
for video files, the identification
process begins.
In general, the investigation
methods are time consuming,
which therefore increases the
cost. “The proliferation of video
material that can be downloaded
from the internet has resulted in
child abuse and terrorism cases
becoming more complex and
time consuming to investigate,”
explained Dr Richard Leary,
managing director of Forensic
Pathways and a founder of the
Jill Dando institute.
Forensic Pathways, based in
the Midlands in the UK, has de-
35%
IsTOCKPHOTO
Hard drives can be
interrogated for
illicit video files
more quickly with a
tool that automates
the process
13
News
U n i T E d S TAT E S
Survey reveals police department use of
social media for criminal investigations
Eighty per cent of forces
are using social media
to gather evidence, yet
few officers receive
training on how to do so
A survey of the law enforcement in the US
has shown that four out of five agencies
who responded use various social media
platforms to assist in investigations.
The survey also found that agencies
serving smaller populations and with fewer
sworn personnel use social media more,
while state agencies tend to use it less than
local and federal agencies.
The research also found that identifying
people and locations; discovering criminal activity and locations; and gathering
evidence are the top activities, while Facebook and YouTube are the most widely
used platforms.
Significantly, respondents to the survey
said that in 67 per cent of cases search
warrants using social media to establish
probable cause hold up in court when
challenged. But only 10 per cent of respondents learned how to use social media for investigations through formal training given at the agency.
The survey also generated anecdotal use
cases. One law enforcement officer indicated that social media provided information on a threat involving students in a local
high school.
“Further investigation using Facebook
revealed the threats were credible and we
conducted follow-up investigations which
revealed a student intent on harming oth-
ers. The student was in the process of attempting to acquire weapons. It’s my belief
we avoided a ‘Columbine’ type scenario.”
The research conducted in March 2012
assessed the law enforcement community’s
understanding of, proclivity to use, and actual use of social media, and aimed to better understand acceptability thresholds of
various types of investigative techniques
and current resources and processes that
are being used.
Sponsored by consultancy LexisNexis,
the nationwide survey was conducted online and solicited feedback from more than
1,200 participants at every level of law enforcement – from rural localities to major
metropolitan cities to federal agencies.
The respondents were active law enforcement professionals ranging in age, experience, and job level.
ISTOCkPhOTO
Gang violence tackled through social networking
Cincinnati Police Department
has pioneered the use of a
social media analysis tool to
combat gang-related violence
in the city. Captain Daniel W
Gerard, special operations section commander, says: “We use
social media to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle our violent
street gangs.”
The department’s real time
crime centre had eight dedicated staff monitoring up to 30
social media sites a day for intelligence on gang crime. They
keep an eye on the activities of
gang members. “We also use it
to network their associations,”
Captain Gerard told Police Product Insight.
Launched in May 2008, the
Cincinnati Police Department’s
investigation into the city’s
Northside Taliband gang was
also the first time the department used social network analysis (SNA) in a gang investigation.
SNA is a discipline that grew out
14
social media analysis can describe how gangs are organised
of sociology to map and measure relationships and flows between individuals or groups.
It has been applied extensively in the private sector, to
understand markets and organisations, and to a lesser degree in the public health field
to understand the transmission
of disease. Its use in domestic
law enforcement and violence
reduction remains rare.
In April 2009, a regular analysis
of crime hot spots in Cincinnati
found that members of the Tot
Lot Posse were involved in 25
per cent of the firearm-involved
violence in the West End (District 1 of Cincinnati’s five police
districts), either as suspects or
victims. The department’s use of
social media to combat this gang
violence led to it winning the International Association of Chiefs
of Police’s (IACP) Criminal Investigations Award for Gangs Investigation in 2009. “Four years later,
crime in that neighbourhood is
still down by over 60 per cent,”
says Captain Gerard.
The department uses social
media analysis to help it focus
on people who are actively involved in violent crime, because
it couldn’t afford to waste resources on “marginal players”.
“These guys will brag about
what they did on the internet,”
adds Captain Gerard. “Amazingly, they will confess to crimes
they were involved in. You can’t
just rely on that to make a case,
but it can point you in the right
direction, to people who may
have knowledge of the crime
or it may verify something until
now you have only suspected
to be true.”
a N a ly s i s
Latent fingerprinting needs improved
technologies to reduce human errors
The technology used to examine
latent fingerprints needs to be
improved to help avoid human
error, a report has concluded.
The report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department
of Justice’s National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) has documented
149 potential sources of human
error in the analysis of crime
scene fingerprints.
It says that more sophisticated
algorithms used in Automated
Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) and better training of
fingerprint staff who used those
systems by AFIS vendors would
help reduce the error rate.
Several high-profile cases in
the United States and abroad
during the past 20 years have
shown that forensic examiners
can sometimes make mistakes
when analyzing or comparing
prints, or even in communicating findings to law enforcement
officials or juries.
Latent print examiners use online databases, digital enhancement software, and other types
of technology to assist with the
analysis, comparison, examination, and verification (ACEV) process. Combining these tools with
the examiner’s own expertise
can make investigations more
reliable and easier to explain to
juries, the report concluded.
The companies that supply
AFIS software and hardware
provide general training on
using the system, but they do
not clearly define which latent
FBI
Report identifies
149 sources of
potential errors
in the analysis
of crime scene
fingerprints
Many examiners prefer inked prints for final comparisons
prints are most suitable for
database searches, the report
found. With experience, latent
print examiners may develop an
understanding of what makes a
latent print of “AFIS quality” for
a particular system, but receiving formal instruction and training in making these decisions
would be more efficient.
AFIS vendors typically do not
provide training on how to encode a latent print to maximize
the match capabilities of the
system. An AFIS search merely
provides a list of exemplars with
the highest similarity scores, as
determined by a proprietary algorithm. Latent print examiners
often use trial and error, entering the same latent print multiple ways to see the effect on
the resulting candidate list. The
report concluded that vendors
should expand their training
programmes to include instruction in the most effective methods for encoding.
Digital scanning devices
known as livescan are frequently
used to capture exemplar prints
and to submit them to automated systems. This process allows
high-quality digital images to
be stored in central databases.
But the report called for the
technology to be improved. For
example, livescan can produce
distorted images of the flow
of friction ridge skin because
of the process of recording a
three-dimensional object on a
two-dimensional surface.
Some livescan (and almost all
automated fingerprint identification) systems compress images. This practice causes critical
details in the friction ridge impression to be lost, even when
the images are decompressed.
Most AFIS and livescan sys-
tems use images scanned at
500 pixels per inch. Although
this standard satisfies the FBI’s
electronic fingerprint transmission specification standard,
such images, especially if highly
compressed, may not capture
all Level 3 Detail (L3D) that
would be desirable for examiners performing comparisons.
Because of these limitations,
many examiners prefer inked
prints over livescan images for
final comparisons.
The report calls on federal
government to support research
into improving automated fingerprint identification systems.
This would include expanding the algorithms used to
match prints to account for the
fact that the diagnostic value of
minutiae depends on the region
in which they are located.
Fingerprint and palm print
databases should be interoperable among local, state, and
federal automated identification systems, it adds.
Another recommendation is
to increase compatibility between automated identification systems and other latent
print software tools, including
digital enhancement programs,
probability calculation programs, and automated quality
assessment programs.
AMERicAn AFiS SySTEMS
AFIS databases exist at federal, state, and local levels. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS),
managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), holds
most of the fingerprint sets and other identification records
collected in the country, both from criminal and civil sources.
In addition, every state either has its own AFIS or shares an
AFIS with other states. Many localities, especially large metropolitan areas, have their own systems as well. All of these
automated systems have capabilities such as latent print
searching, electronic image storage, and fingerprint image
transmission, and some include palm prints as well. In criminal cases, IAFIS searches through millions of criminal entries
and returns results in about 10 minutes.
15
News
unitEd kingdoM
shackled to satellite surveillance
GPs tracking systems could replace current tagging measures
in the report – because it only
monitors someone when they
get home. There is no way to
find out where they have been
in the interim.
To date, Bedfordshire Police
has used tagging technology as
a way of monitoring high-volume crime offenders, such as serial burglars and those involved
in vehicle crime. Andrew Richer,
assistant chief constable at the
force, told Police Product Insight
that initial trials with the technology have been successful.
If offenders are facing court
proceedings they are given the
opportunity to join the rehabilitation programme, which involves
tagging. This is in tandem with
help for health problems, such as
drug addiction, and housing assistance if it means they get away
from a “peer pressure” offending
cycle. They are also required to
acknowledge past offending.
“There must be an admission
GooGle mAPs
The use of electronic tagging
within the UK’s criminal justice
system has more than doubled
in the past six years, with 80,000
people tagged in 2010-11. But,
despite tagging’s popularity with
the judiciary, the technology has
suffered an indifferent reputation for reliability and effectiveness that has been reflected in a
series of damaging reports.
The latest published in June
by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation found that more
than a third – 37 per cent – of
tagging cases involve serious
violations, including damaging
equipment or being absent for
the entire curfew period.
Despite these figures, some
UK police forces have reported
successful trials with more accurate electronic tracking devices. Bedfordshire Police, is
currently piloting the Smart Tag
(previously known as Tracker).
The system allows police and
probation services to track and
pinpoint an offender’s location
to within a few feet anywhere
in the world, through a tiny box
securely attached to an ankle
strap. This is in stark contrast
to the traditional curfew tag
– used widely but criticised
BUddI
A satellite tracking
system that
monitors offenders
on parole could be
about to change
the sector for good
Offenders can be placed at specific locations at a point in time
16
“Once fully
charged, the
equipment will
run for a week”
of what their past lifestyle has
been,” says ACC Richer. “You can’t
really hope to rehabilitate these
offenders unless they make a full
and frank admission.”
Although it is the judiciary that
determines who can be tagged,
the police force is heavily involved in the vetting process to
assess the level and nature of offending to weed out those who
are trying to play the system.
Those deemed eligible for
tagging wear it for the duration
of a deferred sentence, which is
often for a substantial period of
time. According to ACC Richer,
the tagging system allows the
police to keep track of offenders and eliminate them from
ongoing inquiries. “If you get a
crime which carries a similar MO
[modus operandi] to that of the
tagged person, detectives can
check the tagging data and prove
they were not there,” he says.
The system provides the force
with an automated GPS location
read-out linked to its crime data.
“We simply feed in the geographic location of crime and
the window of opportunity without any of the victim’s details,”
says ACC Richer. “That gets overlaid against the tag data.” If the
tag location matches that of the
crime location then officers will
take action. They do not monitor
the tag location 24 hours a day,
but the crime data and tag data
are matched every day.
“This is a pilot, but it has shown
that the technology is pretty
good,” says ACC Richer. “We had
one offender who perpetrated a
burglary while wearing a tag and
the system was accurate enough
to place him in the house at the
time of the offence.” He denied
the offence at first, but pleaded
guilty when confronted with the
tagging data.
ACC Richer says the charging
time for the tag is quite long, but
once fully charged the equipment will run for a week. “No
technology is infallible,” he says.
“You can run the charge down
[to avoid detection] but by doing that the offender would be
in breach of their agreement.” It
is also possible to damage the
tag, but a built-in sensor will
transmit an alarm message if an
offender tries to break it. The tag
could eventually be used as part
of bail conditions or become an
integral part of sex offender prevention orders. “It might also be
pertinent to domestic violence
cases, because you can set the
tags to monitor someone’s proximity to another person.”
The Bedfordshire pilot has
been running for a year. Although it has not stopped all
offending behaviour, ACC Richer
says a positive aspect of the trial
is that it can identify recidivists.
Buddi, the British company behind Smart Tag, is pitching to supply specialist GPS tracking equipment to the Ministry of Justice.
Earlier this year, the justice minister Crispin Blunt said for the first
time that GPS technology could
replace the current measures for
monitoring offenders.
Gary Mason
august/sEPtEMBER 2012
Body-worn-video solutions
for modern day policing
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17
products
S U Rv E i l l A n c E
Focus on the bigger picture
A surveillance system designed
for border and security applications has been developed by
Carl Zeiss Optronics.
The Night Owl is equipped
with various long-range sensors and an observation field of
360°. It combines a high-resolution thermal imaging camera, a
high-definition daylight camera
and a laser rangefinder.
The stabilised system has a
claimed range of up to 30km
and uses a medium-wave infrared thermal imager with
megapixel resolution and optics. The colour daylight camera
can also record video footage if
required. The open interfaces
allow integration with existing networks, according to the
developers. Other information
sources, such as radar or acoustics, can also be imaged.
The concept uses individual, the Night owl uses modular components so it can be serviced on-site more quickly
replaceable components, so
A continuous zoom function significantly effect the quality
it can be serviced by trained
T E c H n i c A l D ATA
service personnel on-site. This on the autofocus cameras allow of the image information that is
modular design also makes it detected subjects to be tracked obtained.
Azimuth Range: 360°
Carl Zeiss Optronics says
easier to start up. The individ- so they never go out of sight
Zoom: x200, continuous
ual sensors’ automatically align and for extensive segments to the system has integrated
Range: up to 30 km
digital image processing to
their lines of sight, so no manu- be monitored continuously.
Laser Range Finder
The system can handle ex- compensate for heat haze. In
al fine tuning is necessary.
wavelength: 1,570 μm
The system’s software sup- treme climates from ice to des- order to recognize objects at
Field of view: Daylight
ports security forces and op- ert and in temperatures from long distances through haze
camera from 1.5° x 0.84°
erators by means of intelligent -32°C to 71°C. Based on cus- or fog, the daylight camera
up to 30° x 16.9°; Thermal
functions such as the recogni- tomer requests, other tempera- can be fitted with an additionImager: from 0.6° x 0.48°
tion of moving objects, alerting ture ranges can be be catered al sensor in the short-wave inup to 30.0° x 24.0°
to, as extreme fluctuations can frared range (SWIR).
and tracking.
P RoT E c T i o n
The self-defence spray that also gathers evidence
A prototype of a device that can disable a
suspect with an incapacitating spray while
transmitting pictures, sound and the GPS
position of the attacker at the same time, is
being developed by a US company.
Co-invented by a former state policeman,
R--I--D uses sensors to determine how far
away an attacker is (up to 20 feet), and then
sprays a specific amount of arresting agent
to disable the attacker using an advanced
macro-fluidic, blow down technique. A tiny
video camera simultaneously transmits
pictures, sound and GPS position of the at18
tacker back to law enforcement command,
which will seek to identify criminals, while
gathering this data as evidence.
The advanced crime-reporting is accomplished through Enginasion’s proprietary
Robo-Tech Droid cellular technology that
is currently used for real-time high-tech
instrument monitoring applications, with
alert-resolution transponding.
“We believe that R--I--D™ could reduce
violent crime by giving citizens an alternative to defend themselves in a more responsible manner than a lethal defense response.
Current laws have shown the tragic consequences when no other defense mechanism
is available at a crisis time of personal confrontation,” said David Bonneau, CEO and
founder of Enginasion, the firm that is developing the Stopper defense device.
Co-inventor Roland Ouellette is also the
founder of MOAB Training International, a
company that specialises in management
of aggressive behavior training. Mr Ouellette
is a retired lieutenant from the Connecticut
State Police Department and served in the
Army Security Agency.
products
Thermal imaging in a smaller package
FLIR Systems has developed a
range of its handheld H-Series
Monocular and Bi-Ocular Thermal Cameras aimed at the law
enforcement market.
The smaller, more affordable
LS-Series imagers provide a
surveillance capability through
smoke, dust, light fog, and light
foliage in any lighting conditions, the company says.
There are two models in the
new LS-Series: LS32 and LS64.
Both have a sealed eyepiece,
diopter adjustment and resolution options designed for patrol,
surveillance, and searches.
The LS64’s longer stand-off
is designed for special tactics,
critical infrastructure protection,
protective service and highthreat security situations.
Push-button features include
zoom, polarity switching and
viewfinder brightness. It also
has a tactical laser pointer.
A Li-Ion battery provides up
to five hours of operation
P RoT E c T i v E c l oT H i n G
FoREnSicS
BlackBerry smartphone cool under the collar
interrogation improved
The Chip-Off forensic data
extraction service for locked,
damaged and hard to handle
exhibits, developed by Forensic Telecommunications Services (FTS), now supports late
model BlackBerry devices.
Using the latest laboratory
tools and software developments Chip-Off can now bypass encryption and retrieve
the physical memory on models such as the BlackBerry Bold
9790 and 9900, and Curve
9360, the company claims.
There is also the possibility
of uncovering deleted files.
Data decoding is achieved using bespoke FTS techniques
and not third-party software
solutions, said the company.
Other examination features
of the system include:
l Telephony data
l User content, such as calendar entries and media files
l Screening for third party applications and data recovery
(such as Facebook passwords.)
l Ascertaining the SMS, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and
email deletion frequency
l Recovery of inactive BBM
data and cached data
l The decompression of text
strings in excess of 35 characters (emails, BBM and SMS)
l Recovery of MSN chat logs.
Traffic police in India will be
wearing neck cooling scarves
to help them cope with the
heat. Once immersed into
water, poly crystals inside the
re-usable scarves retain water,
which evaporates slowly and
creates a cooling effect. They
can last up to three days before needing a fresh soak.
The neck cooling scarf supplied by BCB International is
approved by NATO. The Kolkata Police have ordered approximately 4,000 to offer
respite to their traffic officers,
who work in the open in the
height of summer. The simple,
but highly effective scarf works
through evaporation.
Soaking them in water for
around 15 minutes allows the
poly-crystals to absorb and retain a relatively large volume of
water. When worn, the retained
water evaporates and draws
away body heat, creating a
cooling effect.
This cooling effect can be
increased by refrigerating the
scarf, according to the company. They can be worn around
the neck or forehead, are nontoxic and re-usable.
M o B i l E D ATA
Wireless video uploads for vehicles
Verizon 4G vehicle router
Cobb County Police Department
in Georgia is using Rocket wireless vehicle routers to provide
connectivity on the Verizon 4G
network for all its vehicles.
Combined with Digital Ally
videocam systems, the routers
will provide high-speed wireless
uploading of video files from
police cars in Cobb police station parking lots to centralised
video storage servers.
the scarf remains cool
for up to three days
19
products
video that keeps your hands free
The latest updates for three body-worn video systems that provide
officers with an easy way of gathering vital evidence while on patrol
EDESix
Grampian Police is set to become the first force in Scotland to give every on-duty officer access to body worn video
camera technology.
Following the successful
pilot of the body worn video
cameras in Aberdeen over the
past 18 months, the scheme
will now be rolled out across
the Moray and Aberdeenshire
divisions.
The force will soon have
enough cameras that every
single operational officer or
pair of officers on duty will
have access to the equipment.
The cameras, manufactured by
Edesix, which are smaller and
lighter than a mobile phone, are
designed as ID badges and worn
on the upper body. They can be
used in a range of police work
including city centre patrols,
specific events, operations and
during drugs search warrants.
They take clear and accurate digital images, with sound
which provide additional evidence, which can be critical.
and the initial purchase is for
600 systems.
The eWitness system uses a
solid-state high-definition recorder and camera and provides
various mounting options. It can
be worn on the body or head, so
it can be used by officers on foot,
in vehicles, for public order duties or even on horseback, with
the cameras being adjusted to
suit the officer’s role.
The Minister of the Interior is
responsible for the general interi-
or security of the country, including the major law-enforcement
forces: the French National Police
and the Gendarmerie.
viEvU
VIEVU has launched a cloud
based storage service for footage generated by body worn
video systems that it supplies to
police forces in the US, UK and
other countries.
The service is available via
Amazon Web Services and allows agencies who use VIEVU
systems to store, share and access secure and encrypted video evidence for under $20 (£12)
per month per camera, and with
90 days of file storage.
According to a study sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)
93 per cent of police-misconduct cases in which video is
available result in the officer’s
exoneration and 50 per cent
of complaints are immediately
withdrawn when it is used.
VIEVU cameras are about the
size of a pager and clip on to an
officer’s lapel or belt. Video is secured and authenticated for court
use, while a chain of evidence log
tracks who accesses the video
and what they do with it.
All of the systems come with
a secure video file management
system which has several layers
of security.
AUDAx
The French Ministry of the Interior is procuring body worn cameras of the same model used by
some police forces in the UK.
Audax Global Solutions has
been awarded a contract, with
their partner company, to supply
body worn systems and head
cameras to the French police
and National Gendarmerie.
Following a European competitive tender, the ministry
selected the eWitness system.
The Contract is for two years
20
oT H E R S yS T E M S
Other body worn camera
systems in use by law enforcement have been developed by Reveal Media,
Digital Ally, Wolfcom and
Taser Axon
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Intergrated solutions to cover
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grafit-werbeagentur.de
www.topcon.eu
To meet the changes of the year ahead,
improving productivity, efficiency and
developing better links between criminal justice
stakeholders is essential, as outlined in the
Policing and Social Responsibility Bill. With this
in mind, comprehending the manner in which
the government can better co-operate to work
better and more economically is critical and
forms the foundation of this year’s conference.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE MANAGEMENT 2012 will bring together 350 key decision makers from
across government and the criminal justice, local, charity and private sectors to debate,
discuss and continue to make progress in sector improvement. With insightful workshop
sessions, focused streams and unrivalled networking opportunities, this conference is not to
be missed.
To book your place or to find out more, please contact Lucy Needs
E: lucy-ann.needs@govnet.co.uk T: 0161 211 3460
W: www.cjm-conference.co.uk
Official Publication:
21
S
pinning together the many
threads of the justice system in
the UK by enabling the police,
the Crown Prosecution Service
(CPS) and the courts to digitally share case files, forensic
evidence and other information has been
a government goal for the past 20 years.
In theory, it would make the justice system
faster and cheaper to run, while stamping out
inefficiencies such as rekeying the same information or wasting officers’ time by making
them attend court as witnesses on a certain
day, but not calling them to the stand.
This particular Holy Grail has proved
stubbornly difficult to deliver. It requires
disparate agencies to work together
and significantly change their business
processes at roughly the same pace. The
government had planned for the criminal
justice system to be predominantly digital
by April 2012, with paper being the exception rather than the norm. To date, 37 of the
43 police forces in England and Wales can
send digital files to the CPS without manual
intervention. There are also 3,500 tablet
PCs being used by CPS lawyers in the courts
to access their case files electronically.
These are significant steps forward, but
there are still many more to take.
Gary Kitching recently retired as deputy
chief constable at Suffolk Constabulary
and was in charge of the digital evidence
portfolio for the Association of Chief Police
Officers (ACPO). He says: “This has been
a big step change for the criminal justice
system and the majority of police forces are
Web of intrigue
It makes perfect sense to spin together the many digital
threads of the UK’s criminal justice system, yet progress
remains slow. Gary Mason examines the sticking points
now on board in being able to deliver digital
evidence to the CPS.
“But some of the solutions that have
been developed to deliver this are not very
efficient – they are, in effect, inefficient
work-arounds. Part of that is because a
number of forces are waiting for new criminal justice and crime systems to be implemented, which will facilitate the necessary
change. It is certainly not perfect.”
Mr Kitching says a key milestone is for the
Project Athena criminal justice and crime
system to be delivered. Seven forces are
2 2 w w w. p o l i c e p ro d u c t i n s i g h t . c o m
currently using the system, developed by
Northgate Public Services, which links investigations, and information about defendants
across forces. It is scheduled for implementation at Suffolk next year.
Mr Kitching says forces are still not sending the best quality evidence to the CPS.
“Nationally, there is an inconsistency in
what forces send. In Suffolk, for example,
they share a single criminal justice unit (CJU)
with Norfolk. They work to two separate CPS
offices and, for driving offences, send them
two different products. That is absolute
madness.” A genuine drive for common
case files across forces will also push up the
quality of those files, he adds, saying that
his former team aspires to a “digital first”
approach where evidence is digitised during
the first point of contact with the public.
ACPO is reviewing digital assets within
forces in England and Wales as it suspects
that while there are significant digital
evidence devices in play, they are not being
used in the most efficient way. For example,
Suffolk’s officers were completing digital
arrest statements and case files, but then
printing those forms and sending them to
the criminal justice unit, which scanned
them and sent them to the CPS.
“We possess a lot of digital capability
across the service although not necessarily
in the same county,” he says. “We have CCTV
recordings, digitalised command and control
systems and mobile data capability that is
not just fixed in vehicles but can be taken
into people’s homes.” With this in mind, all
forces in England and Wales were recently
given the authority to use mobile devices to
take electronic statements and signatures
from witnesses. Some forces are using worn
video cameras to collect evidence.
According to Mr Kitching, this could herald
a revolution. “The challenge I would throw
down to the judicial system is to ask: ‘Why
are we writing statements at all?’ If that argument is accepted the next thing the service
should be looking to do is rationalise the
number of digital recording devices it is using. Shouldn’t we be building video recording
capability into tablet PCs and shouldn’t the
next Airwave radio handsets carry a video
recording capability within them?” he asks.
James Garnham is managing director
of STL Technologies, which installed a
Two-Way Interface (TWIF) to allow West
Midlands Police and Greater Manchester
Police (GMP) to electronically shares case
files between themselves and the CPS. “In a
rudimentary sense justice has been joined
up – there are electronic connections between agencies but an awful lot of money
has been spent to get there,” he says. “If we
think back to the dark days of police entering their cases directly on to court systems,
printing off registers and sending those
paper copies back to the police to update
their systems, we have come a long way.
But given the amount of money that has
been spent are things that different? My
personal perspective would be that up until
recently, progress has been fairly modest.”
He says activities pursued under the CJS
efficiency programme – particularly the
CPS T3 initiative – are now driving through
genuine changes towards digital working,
Garry Forsyth, assistant chief constable of
West Midlands Police, says digital working
has been vital to achieving the £126m in
savings expected by the government’s comprehensive spending review. “We just do
not accept that less money means a poorer
“A genuine drive
for common case
files will also push
up the quality of
those files”
service to the public or worst outcomes,” he
says. “Two years in, we are £78m into that
budget gap and we have plans identified
for the remainder of that money to come
out. We have had to have some courage,
depart from convention and find new and
different ways of working.”
This has resulted in the force’s business
partnering scheme with Surrey Police, where
the forces joined up with a private sector
partner to help deliver some services. “The
story of police IT has too often been a case
of yesterday’s technology tomorrow. That is
no longer acceptable. While we recognise
there is a huge rate of advancement in IT
we have got to make it start to work for the
organisation and the public in a way that
makes sense,” says ACC Forsyth.
He says the move towards digital working
is a part of preparing the force for the benefits of the business partnering scheme still
under negotiation. It means the force has
had to go “back to basics” in preparing case
files to ensure the files are right first time,
every time. It also allowed the force to review how, for example, CCTV evidence was
included in the file, converted into a digital
format and transferred. “We probably had
checkers checking checkers who had done
the checking. We are not in the position
anymore where we can throw people at
that industry of re-checking case files. And
even if we could, you have to ask yourself
what is the incentive for people to get the
job right in the first place? The key thing for
us was to make frontline officers personally
responsible for their case, and part of that
means getting the case file right.”
Chief Superintendent Steve Anderson is
head of the CJU at West Midlands Police
and was in charge of getting the digital
case files system up and running. The force
recently went through a collaboration exercise with Staffordshire Police, he now heads
up the CJU business area for both forces.
“Even if you start to look across one county
line from one force to the next virtually
nothing looks the same,” he says. “We have
to get on to common platforms in order to
move information across boundaries.”
According to Ch Supt Anderson the service needs three things to move the agenda
quickly forward. First is the sort of digital
link that West Midlands and GMP operates under its TWIF. Second is the ability to
interview suspects digitally and capture that
information. “Our force, like many others,
is still grappling with the complexities of
the NPIA framework and a whole range of
options, which to be fair are just not viable,”
he says. Lastly is a repository to store the
digital information in. “I hear that something
might be happening nationally by 2015, but
the reality for us is that is too late.”
The digital repository is essential because
it allows forces to put case file data into it,
and lets the CPS, courts and defence community access it in a properly structured
arrangement. “Without it we are back to the
same old system in which we are sticking
things on DVDs or other electronic storage
devices and moving them around in the
same way as we did with bits of paper.”
However, there is a danger to rushing the
digital agenda. On reflection he thinks West
Midlands looked at a technical solution to a
business processes problem, which was the
wrong way to go. “We have created a digital
solution to a paper problem, so we are
still handwriting witness statements and
capturing on paper a lot of the evidence we
are using and then we are having to scan
it and convert it into a digital product so
that it can be pushed across the two-way
interface. Common sense would have said
start at the very beginning of the business
process and use the two way interface as
part of that chain rather than in isolation.”
Forces moving towards digital working
should not underestimate the “cultural
journey” officers will need to make, according to Ch Supt Anderson. “Far too many of
our cops rely on bits of paper as a comfort
blanket to show activity and productivity.
We have to break out of the culture where
an officer says: ‘I can show you how much
I have done today sarge, because I have a
whole wedge of paper to put in a tray’.” l
w w w. p o l i c e p ro d u c t i n s i g h t . c o m 2 3
ISTOCKPHOTO
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SURVEILLANCE
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aw enforcement agencies
worldwide now operate air
support units (ASUs). Some
agencies, particularly those in
the US, have very large air surveillance assets operating up
to 20 aircraft in their multiple-role fleets.
While these aircraft can fulfill a multitude
of duties, including the transport of specialist personnel and equipment, their most
significant law enforcement role is to act as
a surveillance platform. The emergence of
more sophisticated imaging and downlink
equipment as well as other sensors and the
growing importance of homeland security
missions have expanded the operational
options on offer.
AgustaWestland AW119KE

With the high costs of procuring and
maintaining ASUs constantly under the
political microscope, new platforms such as
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are set to
challenge the dominance of manned rotary
wing aircraft in the market place.
r o Ta rY- w I n g f L e e T S
Helicopters carrying police insignia are a
common sight in the skies above major
cities in North America, Europe and Asia.
The US has some the largest law enforcement fleets in the world. More than 800 US
enforcement agencies now have aircraft,
according to the Airborne Law Enforcement
Association (ALEA). These include smaller
agencies such as sheriff’s departments,

Eurocopter EC155B
some of which acquired aircraft for free
when surplus US military helicopters
became available to large municipal fleets.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s
aviation division operates 17 aircraft, the
largest municipal fleet in the US. It has helicopters scheduled to provide continuous
aerial cover, ensuring a quick response to
an emergency call. This flight rota requires
a minimum of two police helicopters in
the air over Los Angeles for 20 hours a day
to cover 475 square miles of territory.
The New York Police Department (NYPD)
has one of the largest helicopter fleets,
not only in the US but the world. The role
of its aerial support unit has expanded
considerably since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the city. The NYPD currently has
three Bell 412s in service for a variety of
missions ranging from search and rescue
at sea to gathering intelligence and more
recently, combating terrorism.
“The mission has changed rapidly. Now
aviation is being used more as a force
multiplier for patrol, gathering intelligence, counter-terrorism and the detective bureau,” according to Captain James
Coan of the NYPD Commanding Office.
For example, one of the counter-terrorism
additions to the Bell 412 is a radiation detection system that can identify radiation
signatures from an altitude of 200 feet, in
august/september 2012
“Helicopters
provide a lot of
intelligence
without diverting
much manpower”
an effort to protect the city from nuclear
bomb threats. The NYPD also has four
AgustaWestland AW119 helicopters and
recently completed more than 20,000
flying hours on the fleet.
Meanwhile, Eurocopter’s EC135 aircraft
is used by a number of major law enforcement agencies in Europe and elsewhere.
The German Federal Police is one of the
largest operators of EC135s in the world,
with a fleet of 41 aircraft..
The German Federal Aviation Group
operates an all-Eurocopter fleet of more
than 80 aircraft, which consists of the
EC120 for training, the EC135 T2i for air
ambulance and law enforcement missions,
the EC155B for light transportation and
multi-role tasks, and the AS332 L1 Super
Puma for long distance and VIP transporta-
tion, surveillance, maritime missions and
disaster relief in Germany and abroad
The benefits of using helicopters for law
enforcement work are well proven, with a
long pedigree in such roles. Rotary wing
aircraft provide a flexible surveillance
platform that requires no runways, making it suitable for basing in both built-up
urban areas and remote rural ones.
They act as a force multiplier, providing
an agency with a lot of operational intelligence and overview capacity without
diverting a lot of manpower. A helicopter
can search an area of 1 mile square in
12 minutes compared to 454 man hours
per mile squared when using officers on
foot. It is safer to search rooftops using
helicopters and, in some cases, it is safer
and easier to pursue a vehicle from the air
rather than using vehicles on the ground.
A major benefit for many agencies is
that the imaging equipment on board
the aircraft is the only significant capability available for searching large areas at
night that can also be rapidly deployed
on active incidents or during surveillance
operations.
The downside to rotary wing fleets is
that they are expensive to procure and
maintain. Agencies in a number of countries have targeted ASUs in an effort to
identify quick funding savings.

SURVEILLANCE
GENErAL ATOMICS AErONAUTICAL
a r e U aV s T h e f U T U r e ?
There has been much discussion about
the potential for using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for law enforcement missions but most
police trials have only looked at small- to mediumsized aircraft that have limited endurance and payload
capacities. The results of these trials have been variable, leaving aside the licensing and air traffic control issues that remain.
Although UAVs could play a more important role in the future,
to date, the only proven UAV applications have been for homeland
security missions, such as border surveillance. In the US for example the
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency operates a fleet of six UAVs filling a
gap in current border surveillance by improving coverage along remote sections of
the US borders.
In 2010, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted a certificate of
authorization requested by CBP, clearing the UAV flights along the Texas border
and Gulf region. Its fleet consists of six low- to medium-altitude Predator B UAVs,
which carry highly sensitive surveillance equipment. Electro-optical (EO) cameras
can identify an object the size of a milk carton from an altitude of 60,000 feet.
The Predator B used along the southern border can fly for more than 30 hours
without having to refuel, compared with a helicopter’s average flight time of just
over two hours. The ability of UAVs to loiter for prolonged periods of time has
important operational advantages over manned aircraft. The longer flight times of
UAVs means that sustained coverage over a previously exposed area may improve
border security.
However, for the larger and more technically advanced UAVs, the cost to law enforcement would be more prohibitive than using helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft.
According to the CBP Inspector General, the costs of operating a UAV are more
than double the costs of operating a manned aircraft. This is because UAVs require
a significant amount of logistical support and specialized operator and maintenance training. Operating one UAV requires a crew of up to 20 support personnel.
How UAVs could be integrated into civilian airspace within the United States is a
question being addressed by the Federal Aviation Administration, Department
of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. The FAA is currently
establishing safety standards for integrating UAVs
into national airspace by
September 2015. It is currently selecting six test sites
to evaluate drones for a range
of “eye in the sky” applications.
The FAA is working with makers of
small and large unmanned aircraft,
ranging from Intel Americas and
iRobot Corporation to Northrop
Predator B
Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
In the US for example, Houston Police
Department reduced the fuel and maintenance budget in its aviation division
in reaction to a big cut in its budget. The
department’s fleet of 13 helicopters was
reduced to three hours of daily
flight operations, ending the
earlier practice of keeping
one aircraft constantly in
the air to provide rapid
air support when required.
Eight members of the aviation unit have
been transferred to other duties. The
department is also moving to reduce the
$20m helicopter fleet by selling two of its
aircraft. The cuts mean the helicopters now
fly only 20 to 30 per cent of their previous hours, according to the police officer’s
union which has opposed them.
The expense of helicopter programs
has spurred smaller agencies such as the
El Monte Police Department in California
to buy their own helicopters, but pool
money and other resources with six other
police agencies to operate the program.
A number of companies, including Las
Vegas-based Silver State Helicopters, have
begun offering contracts that provide
helicopter time, a
pilot, insurance and
maintenance for
a fee.
Tecnam MMA
regIonaL aSUS
Another problem for helicopter-dependent ASUs is that they leave themselves
open to accusations of inefficiency if the
agencies that run them don’t offer regional
“
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a
level support and
air coverage if one or
other agency aircraft
is grounded because
of maintenance.
This is partly the thinking behind the
ongoing revamp of air support services in
UK policing, which will replace a number
of regional units servicing the 43 separate
police forces in England and Wales with a
national unit controlled from the centre.
There were 30 police air bases
serving 32 aircraft, costing the 43
forces about £70m a year, when
the review of air support started
in 2009. Under the current plans,
this will be cut to 22 bases serving 24 aircraft – shaving £15m off
the air support budget.
Rather than each force having its own
helicopter patrolling its region, the new
national service will be responsible for the
whole of England and Wales and be operated from a single command centre. There
will also be a clear “user requirement”,
meaning cost-intensive flights will be approved only if they are necessary.
The proposals were put forward in
October 2010 by the Association of Chief
Police Officers. The new National Police Air
Service (NPAS) will also have three waiting
in reserve, taking the total number of NPAS
aircraft to 27. The NPAS will be introduced
transitionally from October this year and
will be complete by 2014.
fIxed-wIng opTIonS
As well as reducing the number of police
ASU bases and making administration
efficiencies, the NPAS is also looking at
the possibility of lower cost platforms
through replacing the next batch of police
helicopters that come to the end of their
operational lives with a fleet of fixed-wing
aircraft, which offer a
lower purchase price and significantly lower operating costs.
The NPAS tested the Tecnam MMA
fixed wing aircraft during May and June
of 2012.Police Product Insight understands that the Diamond DA-42 is also
being considered. To enable these small
fixed-wing platforms to be considered as
viable options for aerial surveillance, the
role equip-
Pilatus PC-12
ment must be a lot more compact and
lightweight than that used on traditional
police helicopters. Wescam’s MX-10
surveillance camera system has been successfully used on these trials, offering full
high defiinition imagery, but with a turret
weight of 17kg compared with 50kg for
stabilised camera systems installed on
helicopters. UK police forces flying with
Wescam camera systems include the
Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester
Police and the Police Service of Northern
Ireland (PSNI).
In Australia, the Northern Territory
Police and Queensland Police both use
fixed-wing aircraft for aerial surveillance and support. Given the size of the
geographical areas they have to cover,
these aircraft are capable of longer flying
times and incur lower running costs. For
example, the remote Northern Territory
area of operation covers 1,346,200km2,
which is around 17 per cent of the Austra-
lian landmass, but is home to just 1 per
cent of the national population – fewer
than 200,000 residents.
The force uses a Pilatus PC12, fitted
with GPS and all the usual navigation
equipment. The PC12 also has an UNS1K
FMS and satellite phone. Both aircraft are
owned and self-insured by the Northern Territory government and
maintained in Darwin by
Pel Air, a local maintenance
provider. Operations
include
regular police
patrols to remote communities, prisoner transfers, Transport of
Criminal Investigation Branch members
to remote crime scenes, transport of the
Territory Response Group, search and
rescue (both visual search and electronic
homing), coastal and inland surveillance,
airborne communications relay, flood
relief, and transport of the deceased
to Darwin or Alice Springs for autopsy,
when required.
Each aircraft flies between 600 and
700 hours per year, with an average sector length of just under an hour. They are
generally available 24-hours a day subject
to the limitations of flight and duty regulations for pilots.
The Air Wing is part of the Territory
Support Division (TSD), which encompasses the Air Wing, Marine and Fisheries enforcement unit and the Territory
Response Group. A small number of
forces in the UK have also opted for the
fixed-wing option with Greater Manchester Police and the PSNI deploying the
Britten-Norman Defender.
GEORGE TRUSSELL
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SURVEILLANCE
Camera system on an EC135
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Despite the cheaper to run fixed-wing options available, it is highly likely that helicopters will remain the mainstay
of the majority of ASU fleets
due to their inherent flexibility
“
l
wIl
aIn
rEm
THE
and usefulness. Those
units searching for budget savings
could look at the way that the specialist
police equipment within the aircraft is
configured.
If you take a look at a traditional helicopter, it is a dedicated machine. That is
all of the role equipment is permanently
installed – the camera, displays, video
recorders, mapping systems, radios and
live downlinks. However, it’s an expensive
process to modify a helicopter in this way,
and when the helicopter is on the ground
for maintenance, so is the aerial surveillance equipment. To counteract this
problem, the system specialist HeliMedia
”
has developed an alternative package called the
Video Mission Box (VMB). The
concept brings together all of the key
components of the cabin mission equipment and houses them in a single enclosure that is certified by the European
Aviation Safety Agency. This can be taken
on and off the helicopter as needed.
This is not as simple as it sounds,
and required new technologies to be
developed to bring the concept to
production, but VMBs are now deployed
by commercial organisations in Europe
and Australia, and also the UK Ministry of
Defence. The advantage of the VMB concept is that it offers cost savings through
flexibility. So, for example, if one police
helicopter is grounded for maintenance
work the VMB can quickly and easily be
LIghTer Than aIr SYSTeMS
There are some other low cost platforms that will
provide aerial surveillance capacity at pre-planned
events. Aerial Products can supply a helium-powered unmanned aerial vehicle that provides on-site
surveillance for hours at a time, providing imagery
for hostage situations, large-scale enforcement
New York Police Department responses, and crowd control. The LTAS 50 rapid
uses an airship at some events
deployment systems are capable of being inflated
and in position (at 400 feet above ground) providing aerial imagery within 20 minutes of
arrival on site, the company claims. The system can remain aloft for up to 4 hours on first
launch. It takes less than 30 minutes to retrieve the aerostat, replace the batteries and
re-launch to 400 feet for another four-hour cycle. The UAVs provide live video combined
with high-resolution still pictures. The LTAS 75 uses a small UAV gyro-stabilized camera.
Few surveillance systems offer the
benefits of rotary-wing aircraft
taken off and put on to another aircraft
that is ready to fly.
ro L e e q U I p M e n T
At the heart of the aerial surveillance role
equipment is the electro-optical infrared
camera system (EO/Ir). In recent years, the
EO/Ir sensors have been complimented
with low light sensors that provide detail
such as clothing and facial recognition
even at night. The sensors are now fully
digital and offer high-definition imagery,
which provides wider fields of view at
the same resolution, thereby reducing
search times, and enables the application
of the latest image processing algorithms
that can enhance imagery in scenes,
such as high haze. However, one constant
through these technology advances is the
fundamental requirement for stabilisation:
no matter how advanced the sensor, the
stabilisation of that sensor while in flight
dictates its usefulness.
concLUSIon
The vital role that aerial surveillance plays
in policing means that there will always
be a need for it. Fixed-wing options will
be used where their capabilities suit the
environment and runways are available.
As UAV technology matures and regulatory hurdles are overcome, they can be
expected to fulfill a niche surveillance
role in air support units worldwide. Yet
neither of these options offers the tactical
flexibility and high payload capacity of
rotary-wing aircraft which, although fewer
in number, can expect to remain the kings
of the skies. l
aUgUST/SepTeMber 2012
a dv e r t i s e m e n t f e at u r e
A successful start to 2012
for the UK police forces
Share best practice and lessons learnt at the Emergency Services Show
T
he role of the emergency
services has come under
particular scrutiny over the
past year as the UK hosts a
number of important events
including the Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic
Games. These high profile events have
thrust the emergency services in to the
public eye and have opened up discussions
around the importance of interoperability
within the blue light services. The Diamond
Jubilee and Olympic Torch Relay saw
thousands of people flocking to London
and their local towns and cities and with no
serious incidents, proved to be outstanding
examples of blue light collaboration.
Many of the stories that we read in the
newspapers and on social media focus on
the more negative aspects of the emergency services. However, it is important to
remember recent events such as the terrorist alert at the M6 Toll and the widespread
flooding throughout the UK that saw all
emergency services come together to offer
a collective support network. Although the
M6 Toll alert was eventually proven to be
a false alarm, it was reassuring to see all
emergency services including police, fire
and ambulance responding quickly and
effectively to a potential terror threat. This
reassurance is particularly important as the
UK prepares for the imminent Olympic and
Paralympic Games.
The recent flooding, that in some areas of
the UK devastated whole communities, was
another example of successful collaboration between the emergency services.
Following the Cumbria floods in 2009 that
saw hundreds of people evacuated from
their homes, emergency services have been
taking part in joint training exercises. These
exercises work to improve knowledge and
understanding of each other’s systems,
building new relationships and partnerships that prove so invaluable in these life
threatening situations.
All these recent successes are helping
to improve the image of the police in the
public eye. This positive image is especially
important with the upcoming public elections for the new Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) role, taking place in November.
This new role will have a big impact on the
public’s relationship with the police, as well
as the allocation of budgets.
the emergency services show 2012
The Emergency Services Show 2012 is an
ideal platform for police to share experiences
and learn from other emergency professionals. Networking and collaboration with
suppliers, colleagues and contemporaries is
an essential part of ensuring an emergency is
dealt with as efficiently and effective as possible. The show offers emergency services
professionals an opportunity to discover the
latest innovations in vehicles, training and
equipment and to network with colleagues
and contemporaries in operations, procurement, training, recruitment, emergency planning and business continuity.
Suppliers such as Magnum, Bluecher,
BWM Authorities, Patrol store, Draeger,
Serco, Niton, Vauxhall, Task Force Distribution will be on hand to demonstrate their
latest innovations and developments and
to talk about cost saving initiatives. The
Emergency Response Zone features exhibi-
tors from fire and rescue, police, ambulance, government and voluntary organisations from around the UK, demonstrating
the capabilities of partnering agencies and
the voluntary sector.
Join the discussion
The Emergency Services Show will be hosting a number of discussions on LinkedIn
running up to and during the event. To join
in with relevant industry news discussions
involving emergency planning, response
or recovery, please join The Emergency
Services Show LinkedIn Group. l
regisTer now
To register for your free visitor pass or to
learn more about attending The Emergency Services Show 2012, please visit
www.emergencyuk.com
viewpoint
Taking on the traffickers
Joanne Taylor discusses the ways in which technology can be
applied to tackle one of the world’s most heinous crimes
H
uman trafficking is thought
to be the fastest-growing
criminal activity in the world,
involving millions of people
and generating an annual
turnover of billions of pounds.
According to David Arkless, president of
Global Corporate and Government Affairs
at ManpowerGroup, it is the second largest
illegal industry on the planet, and is worth
more than £20bn a year.
In the West, and the UK in particular, the
vast majority of human trafficking is driven
by the victims, who pay to be brought in
to a country illegally. The other significant
division of human trafficking is where an
individual is trafficked against their will,
sometimes for forced labour, the illegal medical trade or to service the sex trade.
Estimates suggest there are currently at
least 10,000 people in forced labour in the
UK. The actual figure could be even higher,
due to the common misconception that only
foreign nationals are trafficked. In reality, this
is an increasingly home grown issue, with
many British nationals becoming victims.
The true scale of human trafficking is unknown, since much goes unreported and/or
the trafficking element of an exploitation
crime is not always recorded. Despite the
growing prevalence of human trafficking and
the universal condemnation it attracts, there
is little evidence that the UK’s criminal justice
system is tackling the problem effectively.
Much of the judicial system currently has
little responsibility for human trafficking and
does not deploy its resources in a co-ordinated manner to address it. Human trafficking
is really only dealt with as a criminal matter,
but it is a problem that all parts of the system
should be taking increasingly seriously.
Human trafficking is big business and
large-scale organised crime is the driving
force behind the majority of it. The type of
large scale, co-ordinated response efforts
deployed to address terrorism or cyber crime,
for instance, have seen no real equivalent to
address the matter of human trafficking.
The efforts and budgets put aside to
address what are seen as serious threats to
the UK seem unbalanced. Cybercrime, for example, has a dedicated agency and a £650m
budget. Is this somehow a more severe threat
AUGUST/SEPTEMBEr 2012
to the British economy or puts its citizens at
more risk? Trafficking is one of the largest illegal industries in the UK and affects a much
broader range of individuals directly than
terrorism, for instance. It touches every area
of the judicial system and warrants the kind
of centralised co-ordinated, and well-funded
counter-measures deployed against other
comparable criminal activities.
Central C o-ordination
The UK’s National Crime Agency, due to be
established in 2013, will reportedly have a
central role in improving existing arrangements for tackling human trafficking. The
agency is expected to extend and co-ordinate counter-measures already in place,
but unless a completely new approach to
human trafficking is adopted, it will be more
of a cosmetic change than a real attempt to
get to grips with the problem.
Human trafficking is a difficult problem to
combat. It is a covert crime, and its victims are
notoriously reluctant to come forward with
information. Equally, traffickers are employed
and co-ordinated by serious and organised
criminal networks, meaning it is normally
well-funded and organised to avoid detection. The number of traffickers caught and
convicted worldwide remains low due to lack
of training of for law enforcement officials,
corruption and poor counter-measures.
In combating this problem, crime fighting
agencies must first try to understand the full
story and get a holistic view through a strategic approach. Trafficking is often detected
as a side effect of other investigations into
drugs or prostitution or from information
received unprompted from the public. If the
authorities do not want to be accused of
taking the problem too lightly, a much more
proactive approach to looking for intelligence
specific to this activity must be adopted.
In both the resources put into tackling human trafficking and the sophistication of the
approach, agencies fall well short of the way
in which they tackle terrorism. This should
not be allowed to continue, particularly when
so many more people in the UK are affected
by human trafficking than by terrorism.
So how can crime fighting agencies be
more proactive? One would suggest taking
the kind of approach proving so successful in
counter-terrorism measures. This involves a
combination of targeted intelligence gathering and the exploitation of technology.
The first and most important priority is
capturing relevant data in the most efficient
and effective way possible. Crime-fighting
and investigative agencies need to identify
how they are going to acquire the data, hold
it, share it and work with other agencies
bringing in information across borders and
from overseas. The process of turning this
data into effective intelligence is critical.
In tackling these challenges, agencies
will need to have available to them systems
that can help deliver information-gathering, information-sharing, and intelligence
management. It is now widely acknowledged
that effective information sharing between
police forces and law enforcement agencies
plays a vital role in enhancing the efficiency
of criminal investigations. With respect to human trafficking, it can be critical to unveiling
patterns of the networks involved, the routes
utilised, methods, modes and financial flows.
It is only through a centralised co-ordinated approach that intelligence can be combined and analysed to start to link previously
disparate information, to understand the
holistic view that is so essential to addressing the modus operandi of traffickers. By
bringing together this valuable data, agencies
will be able to put in place a combination of
analytics and investigation to detect and to
connect information on people and events
throughout the entire intelligence lifecycle.
looking at the Whole
Such is the complexity and scale of people
trafficking networks, taking a holistic approach is critical here. Often, arresting one
individual or uncovering one location where
people trafficking is taking place will be just
a tiny part of the process. People trafficking is
big business and agencies investigating it will
need to understand the entire interconnected network of people, places and funds to
truly crack the problem. Ultimately, a joinedup approach to intelligence will be vital if this
serious and rapidly growing criminal activity
is to be effectively tackled. l
Joanne Taylor is the director of public
security at SAS
With its population mostly concentrated in
coastal cities split by large distances across a
huge landmass, Australian police face a unique
challenge. Gary Mason looks at how
technology is bridging the gaps
The
greaT divide
L
aw enforcement in Australia
at both a federal and state
level is set to make significant
investments in the next five
years to enhance its operational capabilities and equipment. The key areas are communications
and mobile data technology, forensics and
surveillance systems. At a federal level,
the government has already announced
a number of initiatives designed to plug
these gaps.
In May this year, Jason Clare, minister
for Home Affairs and Justice, announced
that the federal government would fund a
new purpose-built forensic facility for the
Australian Federal Police.
Mr Clare said that the current forensic
facility is out-dated and that there were
growing demands on its capabilities. “The
new facility will provide the capacity to
process major crimes concurrently or for a
major operation to be processed without
impacting or delaying other casework,” he
said. “This is an investment in enhancing
the intelligence capability of our federal
police. The more intelligence law enforcement has, the more drugs and guns they
seize and the more arrests they make.”
The cost of the new facility remains subject to commercial negotiations, but the
capabilities have already been mapped
out. For example, it will increase the AFP’s
capacity to tackle illicit firearms through a
firearms testing facility and bullet tracking
technology and expand the explosives
analysis capability that was first used to
support the 2002 Bali bombing investigation and continues to be used in domestic
and international counter-terrorism cases.
The facility will also house DNA analysis
technologies to identify suspects, enabling
multiple complex serious crime examinations to be carried out simultaneously,
including through the provision of large
enclosed crime scene reconstruction
areas.There are also plans to improve
victim identification in disaster scenarios,
expanding the capability deployed following the Bali bombings and the tsunami in
2004.
The new centre seeks to improve collaboration and the exchange of forensic
information and intelligence between scientists and investigators, enabling the AFP
to contribute to internationally significant
research-advancing forensic science.
Last month, the AFP announced a major
reorganisation of its specialist capabilities
into a Specialist Response Group (SRG),
which will be the largest centralised specialist policing unit of its kind in Australia.
The SRG is a Canberra-based amalgamation of the AFP’s Australian Capital
Territory Policing Specialist Response
and Security (SRS) Team and the nationally and internationally focused Operational Response Group (ORG). The new
specialist capability became effective on
1 July 2012 and will have a wide range
of capabilities, including public order
management, search and rescue, disaster
response, intelligence, police negotiation,
canine, bomb appraisal, water operations
and tactical operations.
AFP commissioner Tony Negus said the
SRG will provide the force with a “one-stop
shop” of specialist functions.
TechnoLogy hub
Earlier this year the AFP opened a new
facility enabling the force to develop and
assess emerging law enforcement technology. The AFP Innovation Centre aims
to enhance innovative thinking in information and communications technology
(ICT) and is equipped with an advanced
audio-visual system.
The multi-platform environment transforms the centre into a practical place for
vendors to introduce their products to the
AFP, in conjunction with its network and
standalone systems. Vendors will be able
to demonstrate their products in real-time
to quickly identify any glitches, providing
new levels of evaluation and feedback.
auguST/SePTeMber 2012
australia focus
Condon told Police Product Insight: “The
area we cover is massive and we are working at the moment towards looking at a
mobile in-vehicle platform with a view to
building a business case. We have some
technical issues to overcome linked to
the vast size of the state. One of them is
to identify a suitable area for a trial with
various technologies available so that we
can get very good quality coverage across
the state.
“We have communications problems in
remote areas. In some areas we have got
digital communications and the quality is
very good, but in others it is an analogue
system. That is a transition process we are
b roa d b a n d n e T wo r k
“The more
intelligence law
enforcement
has, the more
arrests they make”
By December 2013, Australian free-to-air
television broadcasters will switch from
analogue to digital broadcasting. This will
free a large block of spectrum at the upper end of the very-high frequency (VHF)
and ultra-high frequency (UHF) transmission bands. The government has agreed to
earmark part of this freed-up spectrum in
the 800 MHz frequency band to develop
a new nationally-interoperable mobile
broadband capability for Australia’s public
safety agencies.
Discussions are now starting as to
the best way to achieve this. A government steering committee will report to
the Council of Australian Governments
through the Standing Council for Police
and Emergency Management on the most
effective and efficient way for public
safety agencies to obtain a nationally
interoperable mobile broadband capability. Currently, emergency services use
narrowband land mobile radio system
(LMRS) networks, or use mobile broadband
from commercial providers. Mobile data
applications are being used by some state
police agencies and others are piloting
applications, but in some circumstances
they are hampered by the mix of legacy
analogue communications systems.
Queensland Police, for example, is
looking at a number of mobile service
applications. Assistant commissioner Mike
currently working through state wide.”
Other state forces are also experimenting with mobile solutions. In order to
support data-rich applications a concept
vehicle being developed by Western
Australian Police and the National Safety
Agency has been undergoing road tests for
the past 12 months. The Advanced Traffic
Management Vehicle includes an automatic number plate recognition system (ANPR)
and four cameras capable of simultaneous operation and with collected data
streamed over a Next G connection. This
technology enables GPS plotted intelligence data to be analysed for information
such as repeat offenders, hot spots and
offence time trends.
At a federal and state level in partnership with industry giants such as Microsoft,
Australian officers have taken a pivotal
global role in combatting online child
abuse.
i M a g e i d e n T i f i c aT i o n
Task Force Argos is the lead agency for the
implementation of the Australian National
Victim Images Library (ANVIL) in conjunction with the Australian Federal Police and
CrimTrac, the national information-sharing
service for Australia’s police, law enforcement and national security agencies.
ANVIL assists police to identify child
victims and has automated and significantly
enhanced the process of reviewing images
of children who are victims of sexual abuse.
Task Force Argos is the first Australian law
enforcement agency to use the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) associated
with the ANVIL project. This intelligence
database is populated with information on
all local, national and international child
sex offenders enabling law enforcement
agencies within Australia to improve their
investigative ability in this area.
Through Task Force Argos, the
Queensland Police Service (QPS) has maintained its position nationally as the lead law
enforcement agency in the investigation
of the sexual abuse and exploitation of
children. During 2011-12, Task Force Argos
detectives identified and prosecuted nearly
100 offenders on more than 300 charges,
including procuring and grooming children
via the internet, making and distributing
child exploitation material, and the sexual
assault of children. Dozens of children were
identified and removed from harm. The task
force also self-generated and referred more
than 100 international and interstate targets
to partner law enforcement agencies.
During this same period, detectives also
seized nearly half a million child exploitation images and about 1,000 hours of child
exploitation video.
Task Force Argos continued to identify, initiate and maintain products that
educate the community and reduce the
risk posed to children by the internet and
related technologies. To supplement this
work, Queensland Police Service (QPS) has
also launched the State-wide Access to
Seized Digital Evidence (SASDE) project,
which aims to put the Electronic Evidence
Examination Unit (EEEU) in a position to be
ISTOCkPHOTO
New applications are loaded onto a
“private cloud” at the facility, connected
to the internet via an unclassified network
and protected by user authentication.
Effective communication is a big issue
for the emergency services in Australia
due to the size of the continent, which has
very remote and inaccessible terrain in
some areas which still require a policing
capability.
At state level, police use a mixture of
legacy analogue radio systems and more
modern digital systems, but broadband
capabilities being proposed by central
government suggest there are new opportunities on the horizon.
australia focus
able to meet current and future demands
for expeditious recovery, processing, and
delivery of digital data to investigators
across Queensland.
Current management of digital evidence
is unsustainable. It involves inefficient
practices and delays that result in poor
prosecutorial outcomes, due to the backlog of cases, often leading to dismissal of
prosecutions due to QPS inability to present evidence (often with costs awarded
against QPS) and serious offences going
unpunished or even not being identified
SASDE aims to support regional investigators and streamline and shorten the
time to process digital evidence allowing more efficient and productive use of
investigator and EEEU staff time.
anPr
The QPS has successfully trialled the ANPR
system for road safety and is in the process of implementing its use service wide
via 12 ANPR equipped vehicles. It is proposed to extend the use of this technology
to provide the QPS with a 12-month trial
for broader law enforcement purposes.
ANPR will be used to assist in a range
of investigative and other law enforcement activities, including where signifi-
cant crime “hotspots” such as burglaries,
sexual assaults, stolen motor vehicles
and drug-related offences are occurring.
The ANPR database hotlists could be configured to include a number of suspect
registration plates, which would appear
as a match if detected by a deployed
ANPR units
To a lesser extent, the technology will
be used, based on credible intelligence, to
assist in targeted proactive investigations
including a focus on identified individuals
or organised crime networks to identify
the movements and/or associates of the
persons involved.
e-briefS of evidence
The reasons for changing to electronic
briefs of evidence (EBOE) include the growing use of digital technology as an investigative tool (i.e. telephone intercepts, Task
Force Argos covert strategies) and platform
for criminals to commit crime (fraud, crime
exploitation). Consequently, gathering
digital evidence, as well as generating
documents electronically (running sheets,
statements, search warrants) has grown
significantly.
Currently, delivering briefs of evidence
to the criminal justice system is time
consuming and costly. The paper-based
system is problematic as documents
are held in disparate locations across
the QPS. They can often be difficult to
trace/locate when briefs are handed over
and the current practice of photocopying and printing full briefs for delivery to
the various stakeholders in the criminal
justice system can be logistically difficult,
resource intensive and expensive.
The EBOE solution eases those concerns
and will deliver and end-to-end business
solution to the force, from compilation and
disclosure to dissemination and presentation in court. Courts are currently aligning
their systems to cope with the growing
trend to running eTrials.
SociaL Media
The QPS Media and Public affairs Branch
has won an award for its use of Social
Media for Emergency and Disaster
Management. The Australian Safer Communities Awards are sponsored by the
Australian Attorney-General’s Department and managed by the Australian
Emergency Management Institute in
conjunction with state and territory
emergency agencies. A social media
strategy, developed and trialled by the
The emergency Services Telecommunications authority
The south-eastern Australian state of Victoria is the location for a world-leading
approach to emergency services telecommunications, says Michael Hallowes
v
ictoria is one of few places
worldwide that has a single
primary provider, the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA), for
the delivery of emergency
services telecommunications. It is also
unique having its call-taking and dispatch
operating independently of the state’s
emergency service organisations, and in
having one computer-aided dispatch (CAD)
system operating across all services at all of
its three Emergency Services Communication Centres (ESCCs).
So, when a light aircraft came down near a
Victorian country town recently, all 000 calls
(equivalent of 999) from the public to each
of the emergency services, and all agency
information for dispatch, was managed by
ESTA across a single platform in real-time,
with each service having visibility of what
the others were mobilising and how their
collective response came together. The majority of call-taking and dispatch for the
incident was managed from one of the
three high-tech ESCCs set in typical Australian bushland, just outside the regional
Victorian town of Ballarat. Some of the
dispatch was managed simultaneously
from the Melbourne ESCC. All operators
and agencies, regardless of where they
sat, including those being dispatched in
their emergency vehicles, had the same
information.
This is what makes the Victorian operation at ESTA unlike any other in the world:
the information and data entered by the
call-takers and mobilised by dispatchers
can be instantly seen by all agencies in
real-time.
The Ballarat and two Melbourne communication centres run by ESTA – a statutory
authority created in 2004, deliver a “comprehensive, seamless and holistic network
management approach to emergency
services telecommunications”.
Later this year, when ESTA takes accountability for Victoria’s final remaining police
operated call-taking and dispatch region, it
will be fully responsible for call-taking and
dispatch of all police, fire and ambulance
services in the state, as well as for VICSES
(the Victoria State Emergency Service).
e S Ta
In addition to responding to 000 calls
and operating an Intergraph CAD system
to co-ordinate any combination of
agency response, ESTA also manages and
delivers a suite of integrated and mission
critical operational communications for
the emergency services:
l Metropolitan-based Mobile Data Network;
l Metropolitan Mobile Radio service; and
l Emergency Alerting System.
These, along with call-taking and
dispatch, ensure the emergency response
is fully integrated. Answering in excess of
2.2 million calls each year (and overseeing
almost 1.7 million dispatches), from people
seeking urgent assistance to, at times, life
threatening situations, ESTA is a central
agency superbly placed to respond to
complex multi-agency events.
On any given day, the people at the
Ballarat centre and its two Melbourne metropolitan counterparts manage call-taking
and dispatch for police, fire, ambulance and
the State Emergency Service. Together they
take an average of more than 6,000 calls
from people in all parts of the state looking
for emergency assistance.
Old hands on the floor at Ballarat can
recall the days when an emergency 000
call to police would see information taken
and then passed on in another call to fire
services, and then another call having
to be made to arrange an ambulance
response. The same old ways saw the
information available via police dispatch
quite separate to that being shared via fire,
VICSES and ambulance. These old hands
find it hard to imagine so many agencies
and communities still operating under
those old constraints.
Now, when an incident takes place in
Victoria and people call 000, the very first
call taken by any of the agencies accepts
the incident into the shared CAD and it is at
once available for dispatch to all agencies.
The information is displayed on call taker
and dispatch desks and via mobile data
terminals in police cars and ambulances.
If an ambulance crew calls for police
back-up, the police dispatch has that inforCONTINUES OVERLEAF 
inTerview: Jennifer rankine
Police minister for South Australia
Jennifer Rankine has a vivid memory of moving to the small South Australian town of
Peterborough in 1977. The policing had a “do-it-yourself” feel to it, she says, and
two-way radio communication was considered state of the art.
“Police officers had to drive their own
vehicles to do their job and at that time
patrols in Peterborough on the morning
and afternoon shift had to drive past
the sergeant’s house every half hour
to see if the porch light was on, as that
was an indication that a job had come
in. I think we have come a long way in a
relatively short period of time.
“Since I have been in government,
for example, we have introduced DNA
testing and seen amazing results as a
consequence of that. In policing terms
it has become the ‘fingerprinting’ of the
21st century and a lot of historic crimes
have been solved as a result of police
being able to use DNA. They have also
been able to prove that people did not
commit serious crime as well.”
She says that politically in South Australia the potential of science and technology to improve policing has led to a
significant investment from the public
purse. “We are investing in a number
of areas. We have a new $33m (£22m)
computer aided dispatch (CAD) system which has been implemented by
South Australia Police, Emergency and
Ambulance. This ensures that we get
the right response at the right location
at the right time. We have also invested
in automatic number plate recognition
(ANPR) mobile cameras.
“I have been out on patrol with
police using this technology and within
seconds officers are able to determine
whether a vehicle is stolen, unregistered or uninsured. As quickly as you
can drive past the car in question police
have that information at their disposal.”
She adds that during bush fire season
police are also using the ANPR system
in the state to keep an eye on known
“firebugs” - half of the 52,000 bushfires
in the country each year are thought
to be deliberately lit. The police keep
a database of known firebugs and, according to the minister, ANPR is a new
valuable took to monitor the problem.
“It enables us to check in fire prone
areas if anyone with those sorts of registered concerns are in the vicinity,” she
says. “This is just one example where the
the technology can be used quite positively in keeping the community safe.”
Investment has also gone into the
state police force’s training facilities.
“Probably our biggest investment to
date is a new state-of-the-art police
academy. That’s a $53m centre that includes a scenario-based training village
that has a replica police station, bank,
bar and service station. It is quite an
amazing facility and the first time that
the South Australian Police have had
a purpose-built training environment.
We have also spent a lot of money on a
new police headquarters and modernising some stations.”
The state government is also in the
process of introducing portable fingerprint scanners so that officers can more
accurately identify suspects on the street
and in vehicles. “We have got a trial coming up so that we can monitor the most
appropriate way of using the technology.”
Officers in South Australia have access
to Tasers in vehicles and the minister
says the police force has a very good
record when it comes to using force. “We
have a very good record in South Australia in using firearms and Tasers because
the proper restraints are in place,” she
says. “We have very highly trained officers, but force is used sparingly.”
Interoperability between the three
main emergency services – police, fire
and ambulance – is co-ordinated at
state level and the new CAD system, for
example is the same for all the agencies
so that they can communicate directly
with one another. The minister adds that
there are various state level mechanisms
to ensure that big events benefit from a
co-ordinated emergency response.
“We have a state emergency centre
which is always ready to go and we
have an emergency management plan
in place ready to be activated should
we need it. Generally, the police commissioner heads up those emergency
responses, but then we have lead agencies depending on the sort of response
that is required – whether that is a bush
fire, a flood or a major criminal incident.
We have worked very hard at making
sure that all of those agencies have coordinated plans in place and they are
ready to respond.”
This also extends to providing police
assistance to other states such as the
floods in Queensland in 2011.
ISTOCkPHOTO
MPAB in mid-2010 became a timely
communications medium with the onset
of the major natural disasters across
the state in late 2010 and early 2011.
With up to 90 per cent of Queensland
suffering following disasterous rainfall,
coupled with the effects of three tropical cyclones, including one of category
five intensity, the QPS social media
sites became a powerful primary source
of safety announcements and first-hand
information for the community.
The QPS Twitter and Facebook sites
became a forum for wide public use to
access and share vital advice and experiences. These sites were also used for
“myth-busting” – debunking misinformation being disseminated throughout the
community and to the media.
Followers of the Facebook site rose to
more than 200,000 and the Twitter site
tracked some 14,000 users at its peak.
In the 24-hour period following inland
flash flooding, the Facebook page generated 39 million post impressions. The
MPAB is now exploring how the sites
can assist operational police officers
in remote regions and disaster areas
where information may be retrieved via
smart phones. l
australia focus
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35

d i S P aT c h
ESTA’s current CAD system supports a sector-wide “all agencies all hazards” approach.
The CAD is soon to be upgraded.With
the upgrade, ESTA has a vision of aligning
telephony and CAD to support community
expectations around social media and hand
held devices. The upgraded CAD will have
capacity to manage more than voice, which
means the future potential for individuals
and emergency services to share images and
text through the 000 service.
At the moment, however, ESTA’s CAD
receives voice only calls. There are more than
200 work stations in ESTA’s CAD environment
and the majority of the functionality runs on
the workstation. The CAD databases store the
ESO rules and geospatial or map data which
is received from a number of sources. Application servers integrate the CAD applications across the three ESTA sites, and provide
CAD integration into ESO applications – for
example, the police records management
system – Law Enforcement Assistance
Program (LEAP) database. ESTA has also
developed a method for exchanging data,
providing near real-time information to ESO’s
over a Microsoft industry standard interface.
This ensures situational awareness information is available across Victoria. l
Michael Hallowes is Emergency services
commissioner in the Police & Emergency
Management Division of the Department
of Justice in Victoria
inTerview: Mike condon
Assistant commissioner of Queensland Police’s State Crime Operations Command
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) takes a national lead in investigating sexual
abuse and exploitation of children (see main feature). Mike Condon says this presents
enormous challenges that cut across state, federal and national jurisdictions.
“This is a global issue and it is getting bigger,” he says. “As computers and various
criminal organisations get more sophisticated the challenge for law enforcement
agencies is not only to keep up with
the technology but to give their people
the skills so that they can gauge these
people online through a covert process or
through the interrogation of the various
computer systems used to transfer and
trade these images around the world.”
“We have learnt considerably within
the past few years from dealing with this
type of crime. In that time we have gone
from a process where we were delivering
by vehicle the hard drives seized from
the various regions. We have eight police
regions in the state and the furthest
region is a 24-hour drive away from
the police headquarters. Seized material would be handled by our Electronic
Evidence Examination Unit (EEEU) who
would access the hard drives and identify
the material. They would then categorise
it and forward the results to the police
officers who seized it – a fairly cumbersome process.
“What we have done internally to address this is to build the Farnet project.
This has taken us to a whole new level,
because once the material is received by
the EEEU the local investigators, regardless of where they are around the state
can now access the unit’s server and in
real time review the digital evidence as
it is being processed by the EEEU staff.
This has escalated our ability to get on
top of the investigations a lot quicker
and get the product back to the investigating officers.”
The EEEU also handles seized mobile
phones and hard drives from a range
of different crimes. “The big challenge
that has come up for us in the past six
months is handling iPhones and understanding their capabilities,” says assistant commissioner Condon. “We need
to make sure we have access to the right
technologies to be able to download the
relevant material.”
He says that while the QPS has not
used outside Forensics Telecomms contractors to help do this sort of work, it has
on occasion called in experts from the
FBI in the US and the Uk’s Metropolitan
Police and other law enforcement agen-
cies to assist it. “In these cases we either
simply didn’t have the technology or
expertise to risk doing it ourselves bearing in mind that sometimes you will only
have one chance to do it properly.”
One of the biggest issues around
handling digital evidence is the volume
of material. “In December 2011 we took
on a job that involved 13.75 terabytes
of information comprising 12 hard
drives. We needed to go to a whole
new level to make sure we were not
getting failed prosecutions mainly due
to the backlog of cases. In Queensland
we have a legal requirement to assess
every image; we found ourselves not
being able to meet all the demands.
That can lead to a lack of community
confidence in the police and we are
working hard to bring in a new level
of technology to support investigators
across the regions.”
Police agencies in Australia are just
beginning to use automatic number
plate recognition (ANPR) technology and
QPS has used 12 in-vehicle cameras for
traffic enforcement. What are its plans
for future development? “We are about
to move into the next stage of requesting
government to consider a broader law
enforcement application. Even within the
small space we have been operating in
the ANPR cameras have been very successful and I have been impressed with
their capacity. But we need to address
the privacy issues associated with the
technology and we have been working
collectively with the government to make
sure we address those issues.”
QPS has actively used social media to
communicate with the public, particularly
since the 2011 floods which devastated
the region. Assistant Commissioner
Condon says this is a “new space” for law
enforcement, but is enthusiastic about
its potential. “We average about 400,000
hits a week on our Facebook page and
that is growing by the week,” he says.
“We are looking at it more and more to
see how we can interlink this in to our
investigations. Recently, we had a murder
investigation and before we had identified the suspects there was talk without
admissions being made among certain
parties on Facebook relating to the case
which helped us identify the suspects.”
ISTOCkPHOTO
mation at the same time as ambulance dispatch. It is seamless. If the first responder to
an event needs support, the required agency
dispatch knows about it as the call is made.
Similarly, if services are not required, units
can be alerted and diverted without delay.
Additionally, emergency service personnel
are on-site at all centres to co-ordinate and
liaise with ESTA call takers and dispatchers,
as well as their own operational colleagues
on the road and in the field. Interagency
co-operation has been greatly enhanced.
And, working together, ESTA’s call-takers and
dispatchers have a much greater awareness
of the demands across all agencies. Many
have trained in call-taking and dispatch for
one agency and move to work in another,
perhaps from ambulance to police or vice
versa. These might change agency discipline
but they don’t have to change workplace and
they keep the same colleagues.
The benefit to the community includes
highly trained operators who, in emergencies and during surge events can work across
agency disciplines. In Victoria, VICSES calls
are taken by trained police call-takers and are
dispatched by police dispatchers.
a dv e r t i s e m e n t f e at u r e
Leading UK supplier of tactical
equipment goes international
Taking a look at how Patrol Store can assist international organisations
with their procurement needs and examining some of their
innovative products and exclusive brands
P
atrol Store is a major UK supplier of high-quality police and
security equipment, including
leading brands such as 5.11,
Magnum and Maglite. Patrol
Store also provides bespoke
equipment solutions that exactly suit an
agency’s requirement.
Safer searching with the Ampel Probe
An example of simple and innovative kit
is the Ampel Probe. With law-enforcement professionals and first responders in
mind, it has been designed to be a far safer
option than gloves alone when performing individual pat downs, as well as crime
scene clearance and evidence gathering.
Effectively acting as an extension
of the user’s hand, the probe’s 30cm
polycarbonate tongs ensure that a critical
stand-off distance is maintained. The
probe protects personnel from sharps
injuries, puncture wounds and offers
crucial protection in situations where potentially lethal blood-borne pathogens,
such as HIV/AIDs as well as Hepatitis B
and C, are a risk.
The probe has already been proving
highly popular with the likes of UK and
European police forces as well as other
Ampel Probe
members of the emergency services and
prison service staff.
Graham McKinnon, President and CEO
of Protective Outfitters, which manufactures the product, said Patrol Store was the
obvious choice as their exclusive UK and
European distributor.
He said: “Patrol Store are comprised of
quality people who are former law enforcement and military personnel – they truly
understand the dangers professionals
face on a daily basis and see the value the
Ampel Probe presents to users.”
International distribution of best-selling
Op. Zulu brand
Patrol Store is equipped with an international sales team specialising in assisting
organisations with their procurement of
police, military and security equipment.
They can offer top brands and bespoke
equipment at incredibly low prices by utilising a network of international factories and
product development specialists.
Don’t Compromise. This is the motto
behind the best selling Op. Zulu brand. Vigorous field testing and attention to detail is
what makes this kit fit for purpose. Synonymous with quality at affordable prices, these
products are currently being issued to police forces, fire services and private security
firms throughout the UK and they are now
available to the international market. l
For further information or specialist
advice contact the Patrol Store team on:
www.patrolstore.com
+44 (0) 1737 648 437
Corporate@patrolstore.com
Find Patrol Store at the following events:
GPEC 2012, Germany (stand A05)
NAPFM 2012, UK (stand 115)
APHSA 2012, UK (stand 7)
Hard target
As police forces consider how to protect the
public from the nightmare scenarios of terrorist
attacks and rioting, Gary Mason finds out how
heavily armoured vehicles could hold the key
A
rmoured vehicles have traditionally been designed
for the military market
where a range of battle
conditions and tactics
require high spec and
heavily armed machines.
Within law enforcement, the requirements and budgets for protected vehicles
are less concise, which has usually resulted
in the use of hybrids – heavy duty trucks
that are “beefed up” with the addition of
armour plating, protective grills for the
windows and run-flat tyres.
I n c R E A S E d T H R E AT
These vehicles have served many forces
pretty well for a wide range of operations,
including armed sieges, hostage rescues
and public order duties. But increasingly
law enforcement agencies based in large
urban areas are revisiting their requirements in this area to take account of
potentially increasing threats.
This takes in terrorism and hostage taking events through to flash rioting, where
violent and sustained disorder spreads
very rapidly overwhelming the number of
officers on foot before sufficient reinforcements can arrive. The limitations of the
protective vehicles used by police in the
UK were highlighted by a report into the
tactics used to deal with the widespread
disturbances that hit several major English
cities in August 2011.
P o o R c A PAc I T y
The review of riot tactics and equipment
produced by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) concluded
that three of the five forces involved in
policing the flash riots reported that their
public order vehicles were substandard,
not only in terms of their protective
equipment, but also their internal capacity to transport officers and their kit. “The
picture across the country is patchy: some
vehicles are without steel grilles for windscreens, others without run-flat tyres,
leaving them vulnerable to being isolated
or damaged by missiles,” the report said.
One of the forces reviewed had made
cost savings by reducing the number of
vehicles to the extent that vehicles broken
down for spares had to be brought back
into service for the riots.
“If we want officers to get to the scene
with their kit quickly, there needs to be a
“If we want
officers to get
to the scene with
their kit quickly,
the fleet must be
fit-for-purpose”
fit-for-purpose fleet,” the report concluded. “The issue of vehicles, including specification, has been a topic of discussion in
various national working groups for the
past two years, if not more. The only guidance HMIC has found on specification is
contained within the Association of Chief
Police Officers (ACPO) Manual of Guidance:
Public Order Standards, Tactics and Training,
which was published in 2004. This situation cannot be allowed to prevail.”
One force that was involved in policing
the riots – London’s Metropolitan Police
– used heavily armoured Jankel vehicles
to deal with the disorder. The HMIC report
concluded that their use had been an
effective tactic to push back rioters and
re-establish order during the riots.
The Met’s 12 Jankels were originally intended to play a counter-terrorist role and
are normally deployed at Heathrow Airport.
They are capable of carrying public order
personnel, AEP (attenuating energy projectiles) teams, and if necessary, firearms
officers. They could also be used during a
siege incident as a hostage rescue vehicle.
The Jankels have bullet-proof glass and
tyres and a blast-resistant floor. They were
used “to good effect” to take back ground
from those intent on criminality, according
to the review.
nIGHTMARE ScEnARIo
While the British officers who dealt with
the August 2011 disturbances did not
face attacks by heavily armed rioters,
the potential for such a threat has been
underlined by co-ordinated terrorism
attacks on major cities such as the 2008
Mumbai terrorist attacks. The “nightmare
scenario” of law enforcement being faced
with an unspecified number of assailants
roaming around a city armed with heavy
calibre weapons, grenades and explosives
has raised questions about the police’s
ability to respond with sufficient speed
and protection.
This has raised the profile of a number
of new public order vehicles developed by
Jankel in the UK, Oshkosh in the US, and
France’s Renault Trucks Defense. The latter
has sold specialist Sherpa security and
public order vehicles to Qatar and to two
countries in western Europe and has developed a new vehicle, designed to offer a
high degree of armoured protection for 12
officers in a city environment.
Oshkosh developed the multi-role
SandCat for urban operations and security
missions – 250 of the vehicles were recently procured by the Mexican authorities
to combat the activities of drug cartels and
gangs. As well as offering heavy armour,
they are equipped with cameras, monitors and an intercom system that allows
officers to address those outside.
VEHIclES In THE fIEld
On behalf of the Ministry of the Interior, the
Egyptian Defence Ministry has just ordered
18 armoured Sherpa light scouts and 2
MIDS armoured vehicles intended for law
enforcement operations.
The new MIDS 4x2 security and law
enforcement vehicle is designed around
the Midlum truck. It offers a high level
of armour protection and can carry 12
fully-equipped personnel. It has a large
volume body to enable those on board to
conduct lengthy missions. The seats face
outwards, providing them with a good
view of the tactical environment. According to the company, the MIDS offers good
manoeuvrability in an urban environment,
vehicles
with a turning radius of less than 14m,
due to its short wheelbase.
Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office,
located in Wisconsin is the first law
enforcement agency in the US to procure
the Tactical Protector Vehicle (TPV) from
Oshkosh Defense. The Oshkosh TPV
will expand Fond du Lac County’s law
enforcement capabilities and provide
greater protection to officers during highrisk situations.
According to Sheriff Mylan Fink, the
area has seen a significant increase in the
number of situations requiring involvement of the department’s tactical team
– from delivering high-risk warrants, to
call-outs involving armed suspects.
“Our officers are managing high risk
situations that continue to grow in severity and numbers,” Sheriff Fink said. “They
are putting their lives on the line as they
enforce the laws and protect our community, and keeping them safe is something
we take very seriously. The addition of
the new Oshkosh TPV to our vehicle fleet
will expand our tactical capabilities and
provide greater protection for our officers
in these high-risk situations.”
The vehicle provides officers with
protection through an advanced armor
system that uses ballistic steel and glass
to enclose the entire crew compartment.
The TPV will accommodate nine officers and include electrically deployed
drop-down skip plates for additional
officer protection. The vehicle uses a
6.8-litre, 362hp V-10 petrol engine, can
reach speeds of up to 75mph, and has
selectable four-wheel drive and
run-flat tires. l
Oshkosh’s multi-role sandcat
has been designed for urban
operations and security
missions, offering heavy armour,
a camera system, monitors and
an intercom that allows officers
to address those outside
National Association of Police Fleet Managers
CONFERENCE
THE BLUE LIGHT
FLEET EXHIBITION
The NAPFM Conference & Exhibition
returns to the Peterborough Arena
(formerly EXEC) on Tuesday 25th and
Wednesday 26th September 2012.
This is the emergency services’ one-stop
fleet show and the place to see all the latest
vehicles, equipment and fleet services.
To register as a visitor to this highly
successful and important event or for
further information please visit the
web site: www.napfmevent.org.uk
NAPFM Event Office
Wiltshire Police Headquarters
London Road, Devizes, SN10 2DN UK.
T. +44 (0)1380 734199
F. +44 (0)1380 733412
E. napfm.conf@wiltshire.pnn.police.uk
W. www.napfmevent.org.uk
protection
Protect who serve
As officer deaths from shootings rise in the
Us, the Department of Justice has tasked
forces with establishing clear policies on
wearing body armour, writes Gary Mason
T
he Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP) is a unique US Department of Justice (DoJ) initiative designed to provide
a critical resource to state
and local law enforcement.
Created by the Bulletproof Vest Partnership
Grant Act 1998, over 13,000 jurisdictions
have participated in the BVP programme
since 1999. Under the administration of the
Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice
Assistance (BJA), $277m (£177m) in federal
funds has been committed to procuring
800,000 vests.
Following two years of declining deaths in
the line of duty, the US recorded a dramatic
37 per cent increase in officer fatalities
in 2010. Of the 160 officers killed in
2010, 59 were shot during violent
encounters – a 20 per cent increase
from 2009.
Due to the spike in incidents
and research showing that most
departments that received funds
did not have mandatory policies for
wearing of body armour, the DoJ for the
first time last year decided to change the
criteria under which agencies could apply
for funding. From 2011, in order to receive
BVP funds, jurisdictions must certify, during the application process, that all law
enforcement agencies benefiting from the
BVP programme have a written “mandatory
wear” policy in effect. This must be in place
for at least all uniformed officers before any
funding can be used.
ResaRch insighTs
Changes to the vest program were precipitated by a 2009 review by the Police
executive Research Forum (PeRF) think tank,
based in Washington, which found 41 per
cent of departments do not require officers
to wear body armour at least some of the
time. Nearly all (99 per cent) the agencies
responding to the survey indicated their
officers are provided with body armour, but
only 59 per cent indicated that they require
their officers to wear body armour at least
some of the time. Also, fewer than half the
to improve vest standards, and concerns
about vest maintenance requirements.
The DoJ stressed that the new requirement is intended to promote armour use to
reduce line-of-duty deaths among officers.
It also wants some written assurance that
vests purchased through the BVP program
will be used. “This is particularly important given
that many agencies and
officers cannot afford
total cost
agencies that mandate body
armour must be worn have a
written policy on the issue,
making enforcement of
the policy complex.
Most agencies
do not issue for
everyday duties
body armour
that protects
against
rifle or armourpiercing bullets,
but most use equipment that protects
officers against 9mm
and .40 caliber bullets, as
a minimum.
“Overall, these levels of protection offered to officers have been sufficient
against most handgun threats, but not
against threats from high-caliber weapons
or rifles. also, only 29 per cent of the agencies surveyed issue supplementary trauma
plates to officers for added protection for
the most vulnerable part of the body – the
torso,” the report concluded.
The PeRF survey found that most agencies do not have stringent fit and maintenance policies and 12 per cent of departments said their officers are not fitted for
body armour, other than receiving a size
that approximates their body size. Most
law enforcement agencies (78 per cent) do
not have a database or automated record
system for a body armour replacement
schedule so it’s unclear how often they
actually replace it.
Despite the survey, PeRF acknowledges
the ongoing debate on whether officers
should be required to wear body armour
– especially when warm weather makes it
uncomfortable. Other issues include efforts
of protective
vests and BVP funding
has been insufficient to reimburse all
applicants the maximum 50 per cent for
all requested vests,” the department says.
“Because of this, BJA desires to ensure that
all vests purchased with federal BVP funding will be used to the maximum benefit in
protecting officers.”
F i e l D O P e R aT i O n s
However, the DoJ says the requirement
was carefully written to ensure that local
agencies maintain significant discretion
in how this requirement is met locally. For
example the requirement includes the
words ”while engaged in patrol or field
operations”. This acknowledges that some
officers in uniform may not always be in
situations or environments where they
are at risk of violence. local agencies can
decide what, if any, exceptions should be
in place within the mandatory wear policy
for uniformed officers.
Jim Burch, acting director of the department’s Bureau of Justice assistance, said:
“What struck us is the number of agencies
that don’t have a mandatory policy is a potential huge vulnerability. if we’re investing
federal dollars, we should require agencies
to have policies.”
According to US Attorney General Eric
Holder, who signed the amendment to
introduce the new requirement, vests purchased through the federal program helped
save the lives of six officers each year. l
y
a
d
g
n
i
train
S
imulation training allows
officers to safely participate
in a number of different situations that normally would
take years of on-the-job
experience to encounter.
This is particularly relevant in relation to
firearms use because, depending on the
area where the officer works, it could be
statistically very rare that they take part
in a “live fire” shooting incident.
While gaming technology is widely
used in military simulations, the health
and safety and legal requirements that
surround law enforcement means that
a more rigorous simulation environment needs to be created to provide
operational training and gauge how an
individual would react in a real incident.
beSpoke rangeS
Bespoke police firing ranges provide
officers with the opportunity to test
their skill and accuracy with a range of
weapons on live-fire ranges. Simulation
elements can also be built in to the range
to re-create scenarios, albeit without using live ammunition.
Some forces might spend more than
$300,000 (£200,000) on an outdoor
range and find that within only a few
years the costs of maintaining it have
become prohibitive. This means that
portable live fire ranges and simulation
systems that can be transported into
areas with restricted space – or even
classrooms – have become more popular.
There are various commercial options
that fit the bill. Meggitt Systems has
developed the portable Road Range, a
self-contained mobile firearms training
facility that integrates live fire and simulated training capabilities within a trailer.
The ballistically secure units are equipped
with systems and components to produce
a three-position, live-fire environment.
Meggitt’s portable ranges can also be
equipped to provide training for less
lethal and non lethal options. This year,
the company launched L7, the seventh
iteration of its FATS system. It provides
training in basic to advanced marksmanship, as well as providing officers with the
opportunity to improve their judgment
in shoot or don’t shoot situations, use
of force and the corresponding deci-
Simulators provide officers with a chance
to gain valuable experience of dangerous
situations without being put in harm’s way.
Gary Mason examines some of the options
sion making process. The system also
allows several officers to train simultaneously, with up to eight system-controlled
weapons available during judgmental
video training, allowing them to practice
working as a team.
In individual marksmanship training
mode, the system emulates a range-type
training environment where each officer may shoot a different exercise. The
system can safely support training of up
to four officers simultaneously, while still
remaining in accordance with range spacing guidelines.
Using the system’s built-in video
authoring station, agencies can build scenarios that are true to what their officers
experience on the street, including active
shooters, vehicle stops, and emotionally
disturbed person situations.
Optional extras that can be built in to
the system include a hostile fire simulator kit that is instrumental in teaching
officers proper cover and concealment
techniques when under fire.
r e t r a c ta b l e r a n g e
One of the most compact law enforcement firearms simulation systems has
been developed by VirTra Systems in the
US. The 300 LE can be fitted in to a space
the size of a classroom.
It comprises a 300-degree training
platform with five screens in a pentagonal
shaped unit. The system provides a library
of realistic scenario training taken from after-action reports. Agencies can install, at
extra cost, a stage and audio system providing 2,000 watts of audio and transducers to simulate sounds more realistically.
The unit can support simulation training exercises for pistols, rifles, shotguns,
Taser, OC sprays, and impact devices. An
optional feedback belt, Threat-Fire, simulates return fire with a either an electric
impulse or vibration.
A police department in Bellevue,
Washington uses a customised version of
VirTra’s IVR-180 simulator so that it can
be fitted into a small room and retracted
out of the way when not in use. The system includes Threat-Fire, and recoil kits
that use low-cost compressed air instead
of dangerous and expensive ammunition.
Hard drive
Simulation systems for police driver
training requirements are rarer than
those for firearms, because in most
forces the bulk of training is conducted
either on the road or at specialist facilities with built-in skid pans and other
equipment. But the high cost of such
facilities, plus the risks of conducting
high speed training on public roads, has
resulted in few forces making an investment in simulation technology.
Two high-tech driving simulators form
the heart of Zurich Police Department’s
Rohwiesen indoor training facility, located
in the city’s Glattpark district. The centre
has high-speed driving simulators and
systems for practising high-altitude rescue
techniques and respirator operations.
The “Hot Pot” technology supplied by
Rheinmetall enables members of the
emergency services to practise highspeed driving operations in a realistic
virtual environment in all weather conditions. Before, Zurich’s police, fire department and ambulance drivers were unable
to practise these skills, because local
laws prohibit the use of sirens and flashing blue lights except in emergencies.
Zurich’s police introduced the simulation technology due to an increase
of crashes involving police vehicles
engaged in high-speed chases.
Two driving simulators are available,
one for cars and one for trucks, each
of which replicates the controls of a
real vehicle.
aUgUSt/SepteMber 2012
s i m u l at i o n
the Vts 300 lE, above, can be
fitted into a space the size of a
classroom. The Bavarian Police
use a customised Rheinmetall
driving simulator, below
Tailored to the Zurich environment, the
simulators reproduce traffic conditions
in a realistic way, enabling trainees to
practise multiple scenarios.
All road and traffic conditions can be
depicted audio-visually and are decided
upon by the trainer, who also selects parameters such as the type and density of
traffic and determines the behaviour (or
misbehaviour) of other road users. These
are programmed to react to the behaviour of the trainee driver.
A variety of city centre locations are
available as training venues, together
with rural roads and highways, which
can be depicted in different seasons and
weather conditions.
Afterwards, the trainer can review critical events with the trainees, presenting
situations from various perspectives with
simulation
South Wales Police was the first
force in the UK to install a
driving simulator, which it claims
has reduced accident rates
among officers by 10 per cent
the help of a replay function. Civilian
customers and the emergency services of
other communities are allowed to use the
systems for a fee.
In Germany, the Bavarian Police use a
Rheinmetall VTS Police Simulator that has
been tailored to the training requirements
of the emergency services, who need to
answer calls at high speed. The system
provides a realistic representation of traffic events happening around the driving
students, allowing them to train in the
most difficult conditions without any risk.
The instructor chooses specific events,
to influence the traffic and to define
the difficulty level of the exercise. This
includes, for example, the number of
pedestrians and other users of the road
such as cars or cyclists.
intUitive reSponSe
The system is intuitive so, for example,
the simulated traffic in each exercise will
react differently to the police vehicle’s
pursuit depending on whether the flashing lights and siren are switched on.
After that, the simulated traffic complies
with the general traffic regulations. They
form passage ways on a specific lane or
between two lanes, but some of them
also disregard the special rights of an
emergency vehicle at a crossroads or
emerge from “hidden” positions.
As for the surroundings, urban areas as
well as country roads and motorways are
available, each of which has different
seasons and weather conditions. In
this way students can train to drive at
high-speed inside and outside of builtup areas in the worst possible weather
conditions without any risk.
After finishing a training lesson, specific critical situations can be replayed
by the instructor and shown from various
perspectives. Co-students can also monitor the mission. Existing scenarios can be
stored in the system and later reused or
modified by adding new exercises.
The same system is also used by the
Police Academy Apeldoorn of the Royal
Netherlands Police.
pSycHoMetricS
In the UK, South Wales Police was the
first force in the UK to install a simulator to help with driver training. It was
supplied by XPI Simulation and cost
£120,000 ($180,000), but the force says
it will recoup that investment within
three years through reduced collisions
and less in-vehicle training, which it says
is labour intensive and expensive.
South Wales Police undertakes psychometric profiling of its drivers and
officers across the organisation. It then
introduces them to its driving simulator
to evaluate staff and create benchmark
measurements. Finally, and only if necessary, it carries out an on-road evaluation.
As a result of the new approach to driver
“Students can
train to drive at
high-speed in the
worst conditions
without any risk”
training the force says it has reduced its
accident rate by 10 per cent.
South Wales Police is not aiming for
a simulator that will replace the police
driving instructors, instead the simulator will be used in addition to, and will
complement, traditional police
driving instructors.
It will be a means of bringing the real
world into the classroom and take existing training procedures indoors. It is also
used for remedial training after an officer
has had a collision. If the collision was
at a red traffic light, the student can be
taught the safest way of crossing a junction. South Wales Police has also found
the simulator useful in restoring the
confidence of some drivers. It can also
play a part in community involvement by
engaging with younger, non-police drivers, who are more likely to have collisions
than more experienced drivers.
The simulator has been designed to
place officers in real life scenarios that
they encounter everyday while responding to emergency calls, such as being
behind a motorist who is failing to pull
over because they have not noticed the
siren and flashing blue lights – a situation
that can frustrate officers and potentially
lead to a collision. l
aUgUSt/SepteMber 2012
Conference 2012
The Roxburghe Hotel
Edinburgh
2nd - 3rd October 2012
‘Europe’s priority...
protecting vulnerable road users’
Key speakers from across Europe and Australia, including
keynote speech by Mr Siim Kallas, EU Transport Commissioner.
Book online at www.tispol.org/theconference2012
viewpoint
A game of cat and mouse
Mark Stevens explains how law enforcement has been handcuffed by
a lack of information when dealing with London 2012 Olympic crowds
A
s both spontaneous
and planned public
gatherings have increasingly become organised
through social media
platforms or smartphones, the police’s ability to gain
real-time information to deal with the
crowds remains frustratingly backward.
With the widespread riots of 2011 fresh
in the memory and large gatherings of
an unprecedented level anticipated at
the Olympic and Paralympic Games in
London, it is an area of policing more
relevant than ever.
With nearly a year passed since the
shocking riots of 2011 spread across
England last summer and the Olympic Games already upon us, it is worth
analysing the events of last year in order
to avoid a repeat incident potentially
marring what should be a showcase of
the best of Britain.
A study jointly commissioned by The
Guardian and the London School of
Economics in the aftermath of the riots
revealed that police officials expect a
repeat occurrence of the rioting and are
concerned about whether they will have
the resources to cope with more unrest
on a similar scale.
However, the call for more physical
resources displays a fundamental lack
of awareness about how existing and
emergent technologies could be invaluable in assisting officers to evaluate and
deal with crowds.
P l A n n i n G A n d TA c T i c S
The difficulties faced in planning and tactics for the riots should have served as a
wake-up call to British law enforcement,
alerting policy-makers to outmoded and
outdated methods of crowd assessment
and control given the role technology
plays in these events. It seems, however,
that the provisions in place for future
gatherings and potential flashpoints,
most notably the London 2012 Olympics, hinge on larger numbers of officers
deployed, rather than a more efficient
use of assets. Sir Denis O’Connor, of Her
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary,
has stated that police forces have “made
provisions” for the possibility of riots
during the upcoming Olympics. But, with
the Games necessitating the biggest
peacetime policing operation in modern
British history and concerns remaining
within the force about its ability to deal
with widespread unrest, it would seem
that the police are no better prepared to
deal with large-scale trouble than before.
The difficulties in crowd control cannot
solely be addressed by sheer force of
numbers, some form of real-time assessment is essential in order to deploy officers in the most efficient manner, which
can help to control what is an inherently
“The call for
more physical
resources displays
a fundamental
lack of awareness”
volatile and fluid situation. The policing
of last year’s riots was plagued by a worrying lack of information on the ground,
a dangerous contributing factor to the
situation escalating out of control.
This is where adaptive tracking devices,
feeding essential information to officers
in real-time, could be used to contain
crowds and even assist in criminal prosecution after the event.
Bespoke, intelligent security and surveillance systems, such as those provided
by DNA Tracker, are designed to utilise
geo-fencing and other sophisticated
technologies to find, identify and track the
movements of mobile devices that enter
a pre-determined ring-fenced zone. In
other words, if a person carrying a mobile
enters a pre-defined zone of interest or
importance, the police would be able to
track their whereabouts, and those of any
others, within the zone in real time.
This technology boasts obvious and
immediate benefits for those monitoring
crowd activity. The system would be able
to convey highly accurate and up-tothe-minute details on crowd location,
numbers, movement and direction to officers, allowing them to plan a measured,
appropriate response.
EMBrAcinG TEchnoloGy
The Met is already embracing technology,
with news emerging in June of the force
using crowd-sourcing technology to help
identify people suspected of committing
crimes in last year’s riots in London. Up
to 2,800 CCTV images of suspects taken
during the disorder have been uploaded
to a smartphone app, which allows users
to identify people they recognise by
sending a name and address to officers.
Unfortunately, such use of social media
garners limited results, with the public’s
traditional reluctance to provide actionable information remaining an obstacle.
Here too tracking technology can be
utilised, providing a far more reliable
means for the acquisition of information. Data can be stored and played back,
tracking the route of an individual phone
through the monitored zone, providing a viable line of enquiry for officers
to follow.
Some mobile tracking systems, such
as DNA Tracker, which can identify the
movements associated with a specific
mobile device’s MAC code, can play a
game-changing role in the management
and policing of crowds. Modern systems
are a viable and effective tool that can be
used to alleviate pressure on the police,
providing key information during potentially chaotic moments in addition to helping with post-event enquiries. We fully
believe police forces need to embrace
mobile technology in the same way those
committing crimes have, for without it
they will surely be left farther behind. l
Mark Stevens is a leading expert on
security technology and managing
director of DNA Tracker, which has
worked in partnership with British
police forces and other organisations
to develop specialist mobile tracking
applications related to crime reduction and public safety.
AUGUST/SEPTEMBEr 2012
www.GPEC.de
www.POLICE-EXHIBITION.eu
2012
GPEC General Police Equipment Exhibition & Conference
7th International Exhibition & Conference for
Police and Special Equipment
11 – 13 September 2012, Leipzig, Germany
Patron: Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich, Federal Minister of the Interior
®
GPEC is Europe's leading closed specialized trade fair exclusively for members of authorities. At
®
GPEC 2010 6,204 professional visitors from 58 countries met with 475 exhibitors from 24 countries
and informed themselves about developments, technologies and trends in the field of police and
special equipment. The event took place under the patronage of the Federal Minister of the Interior.
A broad programme of fringe events with conferences, seminars and working group
®
meeting rounds off GPEC as branch meeting.
Visitor groups
Police
Border Guard
Customs and Financial Bodies
Prison Service and Justice
Government Services and Agencies
Special Forces
Military Police
Gendarmerie and Infantry
Product groups
C4I systems, forensic IT research
Safety, observation and surveillance technology
Criminal investigation and detection of narcotics
NBC protection and explosives disposal services
Vehicle technology (land, air, sea), traffic control and road safety equipment
Task force technology
Clothing, personal equipment, body armour, ballistic protection
Non-lethal and self-defence weapons, small arms, ammunition, pyrotechnics
First aid and rescue equipment
Authorities and organizations, education, training, logistics, media
®
LISTEN UP!
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