The International Association of Chiefs of Police has begun an ambitious project to compile a nationwide video database of crime. Four cities have been chosen to begin the collection of data: Fort Worth Texas, Everett Washington, Raynham Massachusetts and Cincinnati Ohio.
The database will collect clips of actual crimes in progress and will be used by law enforcement to visually identify suspects, methods of operation, weapons, etc. across multiple times and locations. The actual data will come from both public and private sources including traditional CCTV camera systems, hand held camcorders and even cell phones.
Some day a detective may be able to sit at a computer and search for bank robberies committed any where in the country by a male with a read ball cap or a certain weapon type. Access to this information of course could easily help connect the dots that would in the past take endless man hours of interviews and detective work.
At present there are fewer than 700 recognized forensic video analysts in the country but the International Association of Chiefs of Police and this program hope to change that as the amount of video evidence used in law enforcement continues to grow.
2 comments:
Sounds like a good interesting idea if not abused.
As one of those 700 analysts, can I recommend that installers set the DVRs to use as little compression as possible. It makes identification so much easier.
Jim Hoerricks
Forensic Photoshop
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