A woman is accosted and fatally shot while awaiting a train for her nightly commute home. As the assailant flees a passerby stops to aid the victim and dials 9-1-1. He offers a description of the suspect to the 9-1-1 call-taker.

What happened? Who perpetrated this brazen crime?

In the past, the recording of the 9-1-1 call and the caller's recounting might have been all that police had to go on.

But this time, even though the crime took place under the guise of night, there was another eyewitness – a video surveillance camera with a birds-eye view of the rail station platform. The video is aired on a local nightly newscast. Someone fingers the suspect. The eyewitness account, video and voice evidence help the DA seal the case and put the perpetrator behind bars.

In the U.S., where an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras are in use, scenarios like this are becoming more commonplace. Multimedia, in the form of surveillance video, is increasingly being used to detect, investigate, and in some cases even deter crime.

Now, multimedia is about to make another lasting mark on the public safety landscape. Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) is on the horizon. Driven by an explosion of consumer wireless and VoIP (Voice over IP) communications, video, and text messaging, NG 9-1-1 will enable public access to 9-1-1 anytime, from anywhere, using any communications device. In the not so far off future, PSAPs will be barraged by multimedia information in the form of telematics, voice, video, images, text and data.

In the midst of these landmark changes, public safety organizations are gearing up for another challenge – how to capture, manage and make sense of all of this multimedia information – and share it across multiple agencies and jurisdictions.

That was then. This is now.
Historically, 9-1-1 centers have used recording technology to meticulously capture and preserve their 9-1-1 and radio communications, because these recordings are often crucial to reconstructing incidents and prosecuting crimes. But traditional recording solutions are ill-equipped for this impending onslaught of multimedia. Now a new type of technology, known as incident information management, is offering PSAPs a solution to capture, consolidate, analyze and share their multimedia information.

"The concept is simple – capture 360 degrees of the incident," says Diamond Chaflawee, one of the patent-holders and inventers of the technology. "PSAPs are going to want to be able to capture cell phone photos, video clips, GIS and other multimedia information and synchronize it with their audio," he adds. "Multimedia incident information management will let them recreate the incident exactly as it occurred from all the angles. They'll be able to tie everything together using one application and one screen, and view an incident synchronously across different media types."

One of the early adopters of this technology is Douglas County, Colorado. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is responsible for law enforcement, investigative and detention functions throughout the County and also provides communications dispatch services for eight fire departments that serve the counties of Douglas and Arapahoe. The dispatch center is co-located with the Douglas County Jail and other County departments at the sprawling Justice Center complex in Castle Rock, Colorado. The facility incorporates some 300 video surveillance cameras strategically placed around the perimeter of the building and within the County jail facility that houses up to 450 inmates.

Douglas County uses its NICE Inform™ multimedia information management solution to capture, manage and analyze its 9-1-1 and radio communications. Recently, the County embarked on a pilot program to integrate video into the system.

"We do video now but we only capture it on video tape. It's not tied to our voice recordings," explains Mike Coleman, Bureau Chief of the Administrative Services Bureau for the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. "But we're beginning to look at integrating our video, audio and data into a robust piece of documentation. When we're ready, we'll be able to roll our dispatch, radio and video together into a complete package." Coleman envisions that the video could come from a variety of sources – incident scenes, traffic cameras, emergency responders' vehicles and building cameras.

How might the combined captured multimedia information prove useful for the County? One hypothetical example would be for detection and investigation of incidents at the jail. Today, incidents involving inmates are few and far between – but Chaflawee says, being able to review an occurrence from synchronous video and officer and dispatch communications could, if needed, yield valuable insight into how to deter and respond to future events.

Looking back and looking ahead: recording-centric yields to incident-centric Although the primary use of recording technology in public safety has always centered on incident reconstruction, recording technology by nature is not incident-centric. Multimedia incident information management is a paradigm shift. Using it, PSAPs can reconstruct incidents from multimedia information from a multitude of sources and formats and then securely retain those multimedia reconstructions in incident folders – essentially the equivalent of an electronic multimedia incident filing system.

It works like this. First, an investigator or custodian of records reconstructs the incident by entering search parameters to retrieve all of the multimedia information associated with an event. This might include any combination of the following: a time and date range when the incident occurred, the ANI or ALI information associated with the 9-1-1 call(s), radio IDs, talkgroups, annotations, video channels, and so on.

"Basically with one search you're able to aggregate multimedia information from multiple sources and create a complete visual and audible timeline of the incident," explains Chaflawee. "Everything can then be replayed in a synchronized mode for an authentic reconstruction." Essentially that means that an investigator can simultaneously view and replay the 9-1-1 call and associated radio transmissions, video from the scene, as well as the GIS displays and call-taker's CAD screens captured at the time of the event.

Once an incident reconstruction is complete, the multimedia incident information can be saved in the electronic incident filing system. Each unique incident folder is accordingly tagged with an incident number or other reference number. Additional multimedia documentation vital to the incident reconstruction or case can be uploaded and stored in the folder as well. This might include cell phone photos, video clips, fingerprints, mug shots, crime scene photos, incident reports, faxes, emails, arrest records, subpoenas, or other supporting documents. Once the incident folder is sealed, the information stored in the folder is quarantined and protected from deletion.

Before the folder is sealed, an investigator or custodian of records can add an audio recording to the folder to certify that the multimedia incident information is a copy of the original material. Today, this is usually done via paper-based methods (by enclosing a memorandum or letter). The contents of the incident folder can also be authenticated through a digital signature that ensures that none of the material has been tampered with prior to its distribution.

The process of handling requests for evidence and information is also greatly simplified because the multimedia contents of an incident folder can be burned onto a CD or DVD, or zipped and emailed. Alternatively, trusted third parties can be assigned security privileges to access specific incident folders on-line. This access can be limited to read-only; but, in those cases where multiple departments or organizations need to collaborate on an investigation, individuals can be granted access to review and/or add multimedia content to an incident folder. The system maintains a full audit trail detailing each time a folder is accessed or modified for chain of custody purposes.

One benefit of this approach is that a custodian of records never needs to retrace their steps and recreate work they've already done for an investigation or incident reconstruction. Once an incident folder is created, it can be easily re-retrieved at any time through its unique reference number.

Melissa Dorscheid, a dispatcher for the Douglas County Sheriff's Office who is also one of the agency's recordings custodians, says this capability saves time and improves efficiency. "If we have a police chase we might need to pull the incident reconstruction for the shift supervisor right away," she says. "Later on, Internal Affairs or the DA might want a copy. Then at some point we might also want to use it for training. In the past, we'd have had to go back and recreate the incident each time somebody made a request. It was very cumbersome."

Today, to handle similar requests, Dorscheid simply retrieves the incident folder and copies its multimedia contents onto another CD. The folders are easily retrieved because they're tagged with either the incident number from the CAD system, or a case number (which supersedes the incident number).

While many of the requests for reproductions that come into Douglas County are from the DA's (District Attorney's) office for offenses such as DUIs and domestic violence – (recordings are pulled on every domestic violence case in the State of Colorado) – the Douglas County Sheriff's Office also routinely receives requests from other County agencies with whom it interoperates.

"We dispatch for a number of fire departments in the County and a lot of the times they'll ask for an incident CD to use for training," explains Douglas County Dispatcher Jim Langdon. According to Langdon the County's new multimedia incident information management solution facilitates the handling of these requests. "The biggest benefit we've seen is time savings," he says.

In addition to the Sheriff's Office, there are two other Public Safety Answering Points in Douglas County, and Coleman says, the three operations coordinate closely on a day-to-day basis. "We do the dispatching for eight fire departments out of our center at the Douglas County Sheriff's Office," explains Coleman. "Our fire departments are the primary EMS for the County and if they need supplemental EMS they call upon other agencies." The other two dispatch operations for Douglas County are the Castle Rock Police Department and Parker Police – which in addition to dispatching for the town of Parker, and local city services and public works, dispatches for Lone Tree Police.

Because the agencies' geographic areas and jurisdictions overlap, cross-agency coordination is essential. For example, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office dispatch center is the designated PSAP for handling all of the County's wireless 9-1-1 calls. "Because many of those calls come in here before they're transferred, the police agencies in the County sometimes look for us to provide the incident record of our initial conversation with the complainant," says Langdon.

Occasionally, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, and the police departments of Castle Rock, Parker and Lone Tree need to coordinate on real-time response and post incident investigations, and Coleman expects that the County's investment in multimedia incident management technology, which will be networked among the County's dispatch sites, will improve the agencies' interoperability. "If we have a large scale incident, we might each have recordings that are going to be pertinent to each other's cases and incident review," he explains. "Instead of going through a cumbersome process of tape requests and shuttling tapes and CDs from location to location, we'll be able to coordinate better in real-time and on-line. We're positioning ourselves to be able to share not only audio but ultimately video as well," he adds.

Coleman, who began his public safety career as a patrol officer and now as the County's Bureau Chief shoulders the responsibility for technology decisions, believes that the best technology is technology that ultimately helps people do a better job.

"As a police officer you get a great reward emotionally when you find a lost child, catch the bad guy, or save the day," he reflects. "Now I get those same kinds of energizing moments when I'm able to empower my staff through technology so they can do their job more efficiently. The bottom line – it's about finding the best tools for them so that they can be that everyday hero."