Anyone who has spent more than 15-minutes in law enforcement knows how tedious it can be to document and memorialize all the information you’ve collected at a major incident or even a small routine crime scene. Now combine all you need to do with maybe two more patrol officers or deputies and then another two or three investigators and throw in a supervisor or two and you’ve got quite a job ahead of you. All of this is especially taxing if your DA is in a full court snivel about getting the package so he can charge some miscreant with the crime. Ain’t police work fun?
So, what if you had a way of streamlining all that work lurking right there on your smartphone? Not an extra computer in your cruiser or another piece of gear on your bat belt, but a simple app on your smartphone. That’s exactly what SceneDoc has created. SceneDoc will run on any iOS or Android device — smartphone or tablet. Additionally, it can be used on a PC back at the station for detectives or admin personnel to annotate, make personnel allocation decisions or just keep up with what’s going on in the field in near-real time.
How Is It Used?
You start by using the app to create a new scene file. Then you can add to pretty much anything to that scene file using the built in forms or your own organization’s forms. You can start a new crime report and add a narrative either by typing it in or using the speech to text function. Adding photos and making notes regarding those photos as to where at the scene they were taken and what they depict is supported as well. The date, time and GPS location are automatically saved in the metadata for the individual photo. You can even add high-resolution video to that individual scene file. You can record victim, witness and suspect statements via audio or video right in the field and automatically have them associated with that scene file. That should take care of the “I never said that.” statements to investigators conducting a follow-up or later in court. You, your supervisor, their supervisor and your organization’s administrative officers have the statements memorialized as they were given at the time.
There’s no filtering.
If you fell asleep during part of the criminal law lecture at the academy and missed the elements of a certain crime, SceneDoc has a resource function that can pull up state, local and even federal statutes for you to double check your work. You can also use the resource function for building floor plans, HazMat protocols, agency contact information, community assistance resources and even your department policy and procedures.
Once everything is filled out and you’re happy with the report, statements, photos, videos and other supporting documentation you can close the file and everything is saved via SceneDoc’s cloud storage or if your agency has a prohibition to cloud storage it can go directly to your secure servers.
Data Security
Data security from hacking or loss is something every agency must be concerned with and protective of due to grave consequences. Loosing a dope case for a quarter gram of meth because your system was hacked or hard drive failed is really bad, but a homicide file loss could be catastrophic especially when that information and evidence must be kept in perpetuity. SceneDoc’s platform ensures data such as reports, images, videos and annotations stored within their system has a guaranteed durability of 99.999999999%. That means if have 10,000 files stored it equates to the possibility of losing one file per 10-million years.
Additionally, SceneDoc was designed to make use of Multi Factor Authentication. It’s a technology used by the world’s largest banks and financial institutions as well as other organizations that deal with highly sensitive data. Authentication methods can be configured on an organization-wide or an individual basis.
All actions taken within the SceneDoc platform are audited and tracked to ensure maximum accountability and data integrity. Audit trails of any alterations or access attempts made on case data can be viewed and exported to reports by supervisors giving Defense Attorneys no joy whatsoever. It’s always fun to see their faces when you destroy their strategy.
Smarter Not Harder
SceneDoc’s goal is to eliminate as much on scene and after-incident paperwork as possible. They have created a system to build detailed multimedia reports at the scene using specific departmental forms and even ICS-compliant forms loaded onto your agency’s mobile devices. At scene and post incident workflow is made much simpler and efficient. Your final product distributed to prosecutors, defense council and the courts is complete and easily understood. In some jurisdictions this has led to fewer cases going to court and more convictions if the case ends up in front of a jury.
