NCJ Number
219997
Journal
Law Enforcement Technology Volume: 34 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2007 Pages: 54,56,65
Date Published
September 2007
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This article discusses how Chicago’s Police Department utilized video enhancement as an effective investigative tool to address the growing boom in surveillance sources that come into police custody.
Abstract
The new video enhancement tool developed and implemented in Chicago’s (Illinois) Police Department is less than a year old, however it has contributed to the arrest of 63 offenders and to clearing 131 cases related to subjects involved in armed robberies, burglaries, thefts, and damage to property. Many of the captured stills assisted other forensic groups in reviewing where an offender had been and what was touched prior to processing the crime scene. Rendered images of video sources have proven an effective tool for law enforcement in Chicago. The influx of video recordings requiring viewing and processing created a variety of problems for Chicago’s Police Department. All video sources coming into police custody must be inventoried and subsequently viewed by a special sections unit. The equipment was sophisticated but not intended to deal with a variety of video sources. In addition, while the number of incoming videos increased, the manpower allocated for video workups remained the same. The benefit of having good video is that it can be repeatedly reviewed, diminishing the chance for confusion. The video also helps address deliberate attempts by criminals to confound identification. The Chicago Police Department found that Procom video enhancement products enabled the district to easily develop other applications which allowed still images, captured from video, to be electronically displayed during roll calls, sent to headquarters for alerts or bulletins, or reproduced for posting. This article discusses how the 16th District of the Chicago Police Department implemented this system in all five detective areas.