Cloud Platforms Could Prop Up Police Precincts

A new survey completed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police concluded that more and more precincts are looking to the cloud for storing and analyzing pertinent information.

Only 16 percent of law enforcement agencies are currently using cloud computing for criminal justice data, but 38 percent have plans to utilize the solution in the future, statetechmagazine.com reported. Body-cameras are becoming more common among patrolmen, with 95 percent of large departments committing to using the new technology. And because the data stored on them will only grow with time, many precincts are considering the cloud to help them handle it.

But the benefits of migrating to the cloud won’t end there. Cloud platforms in precincts could lead to the discontinuation of legacy IT systems and advances in technology could speed up the amount of time it takes to solve a case.

Community Policing

Kansas is just one of the locations in the process of moving its 911 system to the cloud. They expect it to help with disasters and tips from residents. The technology will manage large amounts of citizen videos and photos sent to police as evidence to help crack cases.

And in Keene, N.H., several departments are already seeing the benefits of community policing via their use of a cloud-based digital platform, known as LEEDIR. Servers will never be overloaded if cloud storage is managing multimedia tips.

“It invokes a partnership with the community in terms of solving significant crimes. Some of the eyewitness photographs and videos — of the destruction of property, assaults — we would never have been able to obtain if they had not been brought forward by the public and turned over to us through a crowdsourced platform,” Keene Police Detective Joel Chidester told PoliceOne.

California Gets Everyone in the Game

California’s Department of Justice teamed up with the private sector to help law enforcement agencies tighten protocols that keep precincts from deploying cloud platforms. According to statetechmagazine.com, the state relies on a system that analyzes data to ensure it’s being shared in a secure way. However, when the Chula Vista Police Department asked to implement Microsoft Office 365 and Azure Cloud, the agency’s technology manager realized the protocol didn’t have requirements for it. And the state’s telecommunications agency didn’t even have a policy that allowed cloud platforms to be approved.

Therefore, a security matrix was developed by CalDOJ, Microsoft and the CVPD around Microsoft Office 365 and the Azure Cloud, which would lead to the implementation of cloud platforms across the country.

“Getting this milestone completed is going to release a lot of pent up demand. Most of these agencies have already embraced the technology, but they now have an additional level of confidence that what they’re doing is right,” Stuart McKee, Microsoft’s chief technology officer of state and local government, who was heavily involved in the process, told Techwire.

Could this eventually change the criminal justice system as we know it? Stay with us for updates on this as they become available.