Gone are the days of spending two hours writing a police statement.
In Derbyshire, officers are swapping their notebooks and pens for a small memory card, so that hours of film can be gathered as evidence on something as small as a fingerprint.
It is the latest way to get the best out of technology that’s already been tried and tested.
Headcams have been worn by police officers in other parts of the country for quite a while, but here in Derby city centre they’re being used alongside a new computer system which means officers can store and retrieve the footage quickly and easily.
In the time it takes to burn the evidence onto a DVD, an officer could be back out onto the street.
Posts Tagged ‘law enforcement’
Police Blotter: Courts split over police searches of handhelds
On June 6, 2008, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper John Wilcox was running a speed trap in Collier County in an area known as “Alligator Alley.” His radar gun said a car was traveling over 90 mph, and Wilcox pulled the driver over.
Wilcox said he smelled raw marijuana from inside the car, asked the driver to step outside, and called for backup. The driver, Ariel Quintana, was arrested for driving with a suspended license. (He had failed to pay a traffic fine.) A search of the car yielded possible traces of marijuana in the sole of a shoe but nothing else.
When Quintana was in custody, his cell phone rang, and Trooper Yoenis Garcia removed the phone from the suspect’s pocket without permission and dialed the most recent number. Quintana’s wife Amy answered the phone.
Garcia then began to peruse the contents of the phone, including a digital photo album, hoping to find marijuana-related evidence. He found a photo of marijuana plants in what appeared to be a “grow house,” plus what court documents delicately describe as “intimate” photos of Quintana’s wife.
Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.
Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.
The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.
They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called “swatting” because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.
Just saw this story. Kudos to the guys at Forward Discovery for assisting LE. They also have an excellent Mac Forensics class if anyone’s interested.
“We found a tremendous amount of Craigslist ads that were placed using that computer,” said Ryan Johnson, a consultant with Forward Discovery, which was contracted to track down the electronic paper trail which wrapped up the case.
“And we also found e-mail to and from potential victims, as well as the victims who were robbed in this situation,” Johnson said. “The computer evidence has shown to be be very damning.”
Diggs pleaded guilty in October and received an active sentence of 38 to 55 months in prison. Byrd pleaded guilty in November and received 20 to 33 months of probation.
NYPD Wants to Jam Cell Phones During Terror Attack
In testimony today before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly (pictured) said he wanted to take out that “formidable capacity to adjust tactics while attacks are underway.”