NCJ Number
230959
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 37 Issue: 5 Dated: May 2010 Pages: 48,50,55
Date Published
May 2010
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article describes the features of the Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essentials, which facilitates the analysis of 911 calls for intelligence and investigative purposes, and it reports on the analysis of this software's testing by the Chester County Department of Emergency Services (Pennsylvania).
Abstract
Verint Systems' Impact 360 Speech Analytics Essential for Audiolog software is more than a recording solution; it is a way for detectives to identify leads, for crime analysts to add context to their data, and for supervisors to train and monitor calltakers. The software enables searches of 911 calls by date and time, call type, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system ID number, and calltaker ID. It is possible to search on and isolate groups of calls by using keywords. This reduces the work that formerly could take days to less than a few hours. At the time that Chester County began testing the Impact 360, an arson spree was occurring that involved the burning of residential porches across one of the county's cities. A keyword search was conducted to determine whether there were calls that had not been forwarded to detectives. The detectives were able to follow up with the additional callers identified with Impact 360. Crime analysts were able to search the arson calls by street locations and keywords such as "porch fire," which helped supplement analysts' crime-mapping efforts. The software can automatically notify users about specific incident types, enabling a quicker identification of trends. Overall, the system is less subjective than the calltaker's perception of the relevance and significance of the calls received. Calltakers are free to focus on taking calls, their primary responsibility, without having to be responsible for determining the significance of the call for criminal investigations or intelligence collection.