Smartpolice – futureLAB

When police officers investigate and search, hundreds or thousands of pieces of evidence are collected. Smartpolice captures, stores, and manages digital evidence such as images, audio recordings or videos centrally in one place, and makes it available to all units in real time. Evidence recording and management are seamlessly integrated into case management systems, and all case data only needs to be recorded once.

The smart evidence management solution supports and improves efficiency of investigators and investigating officers with integrated search and research functions, intelligent filters and, if required, AI support. Smartpolice thus improves and accelerates the quality of police work, from the collection of evidence to investigations and searches to the preparation of documentation for the judiciary. Smartpolice also saves storage space because only original files are stored for use in court and no working copies need to be created to process the evidence.

Smartpolice is already being used by 12 police forces in Switzerland and Germany. They benefit from many advantages: Smartpolice…

…is so intuitive that everyone can work with it immediately, without any introduction or training.

…stores all digital evidence securely so that they can be used in court.

…makes all evidence available on a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

…reduces the error rate and increases data quality in the collection of evidence.

…reduces the effort for photo and video documentation by up to 2/3.

…stores all evidence in a data house, including evidence from completed proceedings.

…utilises AI where necessary to sift through large volumes of audio and/or video data more efficiently.

…adopts deletion deadlines and authorisations from case management systems.

Every case must be fully documented for the public prosecutor's office. For larger authorities, this means hundreds of thousands of photos or videos. Thanks to Smartpolice, images and videos can be collated, edited, annotated, described, supplemented with metadata, and stored in folders in a highly efficient manner. This reduces the workload by up to two thirds.

Templates determine what belongs in the documentation (folder data, image descriptions, maps, etc.), how it is designed (fonts, colours, layout, etc.) and how files are exported (PDF, Microsoft Word etc.). A template can be defined for all cases or for specific offence groups.

The Smartpolice standard software supports and improves the efficiency of police in their daily work. For example, when a person goes missing and images need to be distributed quickly to all search teams. Or when the forensic investigation specialists must decide on the basis of images whether they should move out after an accident. Or when the control centre must decide whether more emergency services are needed based on videos of the fire and smoke development.

Smartpolice reaches its full potential in the case of mass offences. Mass crime offences lead to considerable administrative and investigative work for police authorities. The following examples show how Smartpolice can significantly reduce the processing effort.

A burglary is reported at midnight. The policewoman who arrives at the scene secures all the evidence by taking photos with the Smartpolice app. Two hours later, a police patrol can arrest the perpetrator based on a precise description of the victim.

The police first confiscate the stolen items and takes pictures. These are filed in the same Smartpolice folder that the policewoman created at the scene of the crime. For the criminal proceedings, a comprehensive photo documentation is now created for the public prosecutor's office, in which all corresponding photos of evidence are documented.

Shortly before 8 p.m., a tourist reports to the police operations centre. She had caused an accident when she tried to avoid a cyclist on the wet carriageway. Her car had knocked over two crash posts and the cyclist was slightly injured and no longer fit to drive. The emergency call centre immediately informs a patrol car that is nearby.

The arriving police officers take photos of evidence to record the accident. The corresponding images are created using the Smartpolice app. The person in charge of the case links the images to the case. This allows deletion deadlines and access rights to be transferred from the case management systems.

In just a few steps, the facts of the case can be easily visualised in a photo documentation using the photo sheet editor. This photo documentation can be stored in the case management system, an e-file or also by printing out as a physical file.

A passenger watches as a young person slits open a seat upholstery on the train. After the young person has left the train compartment, the passenger takes a photo of the damaged upholstery with his smartphone and informs the train crew. Thanks to the exact description of the person, the police can convict the offender a short time later.

To document the case, the passenger sends the pictures taken to the police officer in charge via e-mail. The image material is transferred to the Smartpolice app via the iOS share function and then uploaded to the temporary storage location (the «Uploads»). In the meantime, the damage to property has been recorded in the case management system. Now the images are linked to the case and then documented in the photo sheet editor.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of ravers celebrate exuberantly at the Street Parade in Zurich. Pickpockets also feel at home in this crowd. That's why the Zurich civil servants of the city police are in the thick of it instead of just being there, patrolling around the lake basin.

At Bürkliplatz, an officer observes a pickpocket and films the perpetrator, victim, and items stolen with his smartphone. The video is automatically uploaded to Smartpolice, and a quarter of an hour later an officer has identified and arrested the pickpocket. The case is documented conclusively for the public prosecutor's office.

At Zurich main station, a young person intentionally or unintentionally pushes an elderly lady onto platform 13. A video camera records the incident. Witnesses rescue the lady and tell the policewoman from the city police what has happened. Quick-witted, she watches the video in the control centre and takes a photo of the perpetrator with the Smartpolice app.

The image is automatically uploaded to Smartpolice and forwarded to all team members in the vicinity. A few minutes later, a patrol in the vicinity recognises the fleeing youth and arrests him.

ACAB graffiti has been discovered on the police building of a Swiss municipal police force. Empty spray cans and cigarette butts lie on the ground. Suspicion immediately falls on the well-known sprayer G.

During a search of the building, officers confiscate a computer and the suspect's smartphone, among other things. They discover more than 180,000 images on the computer, including almost 20,000 photos of graffiti. Some of them show the «work of art» on the police building. The perpetrator is convicted, thanks also to his DNA on the cigarette butts, and confesses. Case solved.

The use of artificial intelligence in police work with Smartpolice has already been tested. Algorithms are seamlessly integrated into the work processes with Smartpolice. As in our example with Sprayer G. Without AI, the investigation team would have had to look through and process images for a month; with AI, it only took a few minutes. Smart algorithms first classified and extracted all the graffiti images and then isolated certain features such as the characteristic arc in the letter B of «ACAB».

The geoinformation is used to visualise all the crime scenes on a map and, thanks to geographic profiling, compared with the locations of all the graffiti that G. is accused of. This gives the investigation team enough watertight evidence to convict G. and hand the case over to the public prosecutor's office.

Together for a safer tomorrow –
we've been developing Smartpolice in close cooperation with police forces worldwide since 2005.

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The future of policing is digital

The leading digital solution for managing evidence

The 8 biggest advantages of Smartpolice

Save up to 2/3 of your time

Smartpolice in use: concrete examples

AI: The algorithm, your friend and helper

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