ONE MODERN AND EASY-TO-USE TOOL TO PLAY VIDEO EVIDENCE FINDING CLUES FASTER AND SPEEDING UP INVESTIGATIONS
Modern police investigations are relying on multimedia evidence more than ever, and we know the challenges investigators and forensic units are currently facing when dealing with digital evidence. Amped Replay is designed to suit all types of investigative needs, from minor incidents to major investigations and to help you and your organization ultimately solve more cases.
Small Crime (Minor/Volume Incidents)
Situation
A frontline investigator is dealing with a theft. CCTV is handed to them on a disc by the owner of a premises involved in the case. The CCTV is known to capture the suspect but it is in a proprietary format and there is no player. The suspect is unknown.
Task
The investigator needs to play the footage and produce an image of the suspect for the morning briefing and for the “Caught on Camera” section of the force website for identification, but standard media players won’t play the format and the CCTV unit is closed.
How Amped Replay Helped
Using Amped Replay, the investigator drags and drops the footage into the player and it is immediately decoded and playable. They easily navigate to the relevant time on the footage and locate the best image of the suspect before adding a bookmark. Next, they use the Enhance tab to sharpen the image and, using the Annotate tab, the suspect is labelled and highlighted. The image is then exported along with the video using the Export tab.
Result
The image is then shown in the morning briefing and the web team have the image for the website quickly. The image is clear and professional-looking, and the entire processing was done in less than an hour without relying on the CCTV unit who may have had to prioritize more serious cases above this one.
The community feels like the low-level crimes they report, which may seem smaller to the force in comparison to the more serious cases, are taken seriously and dealt with promptly. Confidence in the police is increased and community relations are improved.
Medium Crime (Moderate/More Serious Incidents)
Situation
A team of detectives are investigating a number of armed robberies and serious assaults across the force that appear to be linked. There is video evidence from multiple locations and different sources but the group of suspects has not yet been identified and caught. The suspects wear masks and dark clothing and use a light colored vehicle to travel to and from the location. A member of the public has handed footage of this vehicle to the police, recorded on their dashcam as the vehicle was driving erratically in front of them in the location soon after the most recent robbery.
Task
The team needs to gather their information together as intelligence in order to further their investigation and make arrests. The video from the dashcam has arrived and it captures a number plate but the footage is very dark and the plate isn’t clear. One of the detectives needs to check if this can be recovered from the footage, however the CCTV unit are all busy and the footage won’t be processed for weeks
How Amped Replay Helped
The detective loads the footage into Replay and is able to select the range of the footage in which the vehicle is visible. Using the Enhance tab, they are able to make the video brighter and sharper to make the license plate more easily readable even when printed. The image is exported and passed on to intelligence analysts.
Result
The intelligence analysts find the license plate is a false plate, however automatic number plate recognition cameras have tracked the vehicle to a residential area and a routine patrol spots it sitting outside an address. There is now enough intelligence to allow for an early morning raid at the property the next day and the police arrest several suspects and retrieve a firearm. The ability for the team to clarify the footage quickly in Replay after the last incident allowed the detectives to build intelligence quickly before being able to promptly act upon it.
Major Crime (Serious/Major Incidents)
Situation
The major crime team is working on the case of a vulnerable missing person. There have been no sightings for over a week and the only leads the team has to work with involve CCTV. The person’s phone has been switched off the entire time and no bank or credit cards have been used. The case is widely publicized in the local media and with the amount of time the person has been missing ever increasing, the national press is starting to report on the case. Following initial enquiries, the investigation team has determined the person was last seen entering a local shop in their hometown and they have been caught on the shop CCTV system. The CCTV is in a proprietary, multi-camera format and the on-call CCTV unit support staff are busy dealing with another major case that is ongoing.
Task
The major crime team needs to release an image of the missing person to the public and press immediately, to increase the likelihood of receiving further information regarding the case and for safeguarding the vulnerable person.
How Amped Replay Helped
Using Amped Replay, the team is immediately able to load the footage which is converted and playable straight away, while also separated into individual cameras. They are able to view the internal camera in the Amped Replay player and bookmark a good image of what the person was wearing and can crop, sharpen the details, and resize the image using the Enhance tab. The external cameras are selected within the player from the same file and viewed to show the direction of travel the person took as they left the shop. Both the relevant video and images are exported, and with the simple redaction tool they are ready for public release.
Result
The exported images from Amped Replay are immediately sent to the communications department who release it to the press and the public via the website and social media. The released footage leads to a sighting near a bar not far from the local shop. At the bar, there is further CCTV footage of the missing person, however the overwrite settings meant it would have been erased the following day. The time saved with being able to view, process and annotate the footage in Amped Replay meant that more crucial footage was able to be recovered before it was lost.