How Mobile Video Support Department Operations.

Now, more than ever, law enforcement needs a sustainable advantage - crime-fighting technology that is both immediately useful and able to support expanded services into the future.

Mobile Video represents a technology that will keep pace with demands and maintain its value over time.

We make this claim based on several assumptions:

• The demand for information delivery will only increase. Departments will need a greater variety and volume of data delivery.

• Departments will need more intelligent systems if they hope to avoid accumulating an unworkable pile of data. Some systems already try to help in this regard by selectively recording information, while others simply record everything and leave it to department staff or officers to review and store what is deemed critical.

• There are critical differences between information, the right information, and the right information delivered immediately.

• Decision-making will become more complicated as property crime and terrorism becomes less predictable. And as circumstances, technology, laws change, officers in the field can benefit if they have immediate access to specialist- and ranking-officers. Only mobile video can provide this.

• More people within the chain of command will need visual information, but be unable to attend crime scenes, accidents, etc. Officers in the field will find increasing value in being able to share visual information with forensic specialists and prosecutors. And senior officers will be able to maximize their limited time without consuming their days driving from one scene to another to another...

Now, more than ever, law enforcement needs a sustainable advantage. We believe that Mobile Video represents such an advantage. Not only can it expand departments’ abilities to acquire and disseminate intelligence, but it anticipates even greater applications in the future.

Video information is better only if it’s the right information and, preferably, delivered swiftly, accurately, and conveniently. Video-taping an entire shift in a squad car may be useful for review, or to gather visual evidence after the fact. Though it requires daily downloading and weaknesses in establishing continuity of evidence, wireless video has already proven that, drawbacks included, it can help substantiate officer’s decisions in the field.