June 22, 2020 by Steve Tine

Collecting and Managing Digital Evidence During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Industries: 9-1-1 & Law Enforcement

Topics: Command Center Software Community Engagement LTE Devices & Applications Public Safety Applications Records and Evidence

As the world rapidly responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, your agency is faced with new challenges when it comes to protecting the health of your officers, investigators, evidence clerks and other staff. Daily tasks like conducting interviews, collecting and handling evidence, or team and agency collaboration have become a source of concern. In this blog, we’ll explore three strategies — and Motorola Solutions’ offerings that support them — to help your agency safely and efficiently manage digital evidence during this time. 

To support you as you bravely serve your community during this crisis, Motorola Solutions is offering a free Digital Evidence Capture and Management trial — which incorporates all of the solutions we will cover in this post, plus unlimited storage — through December 31, 2020. We hope this free trial helps streamline your investigations while minimizing physical contact whenever possible.

Minimize Exposure in the Field 

The interpersonal nature of law enforcement makes it impossible to completely avoid contact with others. However, minimizing your officers’ time in the field and physical contact can help protect your personnel during this time. It’s also important to recognize the public’s desire to practice social distancing, and to be conscious of how you can help protect the public from exposure whenever possible. 

Reduce exposure for both your officers and the public and save time by collecting digital evidence from the community remotely. Minimize field contact with Digital Evidence Collection, which is a part of the Motorola Solutions CommandCentral Community suite. Digital Evidence Collection provides a secure, simple, case-specific method of transferring digital media from public sources to your agency. Valuable time is saved, the handoff is simplified and the evidence is automatically linked to a case.

Your agency can accelerate digital evidence capture with the evidence-grade Capture App for Android or iOS devices. The Capture App is one way to help your officers quickly collect video, photos, and audio in a single, secure smartphone application. The media captured is automatically uploaded to CommandCentral Vault without having to physically bring evidence back to the station. CommandCentral Vault is a cloud-based solution for aggregating and intelligently organizing all of your agency’s digital content in one place. This way, it can be more easily managed, quickly reviewed and shared from a single location.  

Minimize Contact with Physical Evidence

When digital evidence is collected from the public on physical media and then handed off to evidence clerks for processing and physical storage, it puts multiple people at risk along the way. Reduce the risk of infection for your officers, evidence clerks and others at the station by limiting the amount of physical media to store or share by using CommandCentral Vault

Minimize Contact without Hindering Collaboration 

Collaboration is a key aspect to closing a case, but sharing digital evidence within your agency or with partner agencies can pose some efficiency and security challenges. Control access to digital evidence and share evidence electronically within your agency for secure and safe collaboration ‒ from a distance. 

CommandCentral Vault’s Judicial Sharing feature helps you remotely share evidence with prosecutors or the courts, so there is no need for the officer to transfer digital evidence to physical media and then travel to the courthouse to physically deliver the evidence. This feature saves time and reduces risk, while still preserving the integrity of your evidence with an audit log and verified chain of custody.

Motorola Solutions Is Here For You In This Moment That Matters 

In this time when you are here for everyone else, Motorola Solutions is here for you and stands ready to serve our country in this moment that matters. For more COVID-19 resources from Motorola Solutions, visit motorolasolutions.com/covid.  

Contact us to find out more about our solutions and services.

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