The County
Galveston County in Texas has a combined area of 875 square miles and is home to 350,000 people. With over 400 miles of beaches and coastline, Galveston also receives an average of 2 million visitors each year. Plus, with its world-renowned medical facilities and thriving petrochemical and aerospace industries, the county is also a great place to live and work. Galveston County Police, which comprises over 20 different agencies, work tirelessly to keep everyone safe.
The challenge
With the rapid increase in digital evidence being collected, managing all the data became a challenge for the precinct. Similarly, the Galveston District Attorney’s Office was adjusting to new discovery rules introduced by the Texas State Legislature in 2014. The new law stipulated that prosecutors must share all evidence with defense attorneys prior to any plea or trial and must be able to prove what evidence was turned over and when.
“Clearance is now our overall case file with everything in it, including all of our evidence and documentation related to the case. We used to keep paper records, now we store everything digitally with Clearance.” – Captain Mike Bell, Identification Division Commander
The solution
All the evidence in one place
Evidence including crime scene photos, interviews, cell phone photos, and all reports and records is stored in Clearance, and “all of this data that we need is right there at our fingertips ,” Bell said.
Simple Mobile Uploads
Using the mobile app, patrol officers can take photos with their cell phones and upload them directly to Clearance. This has streamlined the evidence collection process and increased accountability.
Evidence sharing made easy and simple
“Clearance allows us to quickly locate the requested information. We then provide the requester with access to the information by sending them a link to download the material ,” Bell said.
Chain of Custody Reports
With a single click of a button, the district attorney can generate a list of everything that has been turned over, when it was turned over, and when the defense attorney downloaded or viewed the evidence.
Results
When the police department first implemented Clearance, they had to migrate 7 terabytes (TB) of historical data to the cloud, including all evidence collected and stored from previous cases. To migrate the data, Genetec developed an automated program to load everything in an existing folder and upload it to a case file of the same name in Clearance. Due to bandwidth limitations, they ran the program overnight and completed the migration in less than a month with almost no issues.
Today, the Galveston Police Department securely stores more than 80 terabytes of data in the cloud using Clearance. The digital evidence management system makes it easy for the Division to locate information and share it with third parties. One of those third parties is the District Attorney’s Office, which also installed Clearance. The solution has also allowed them to establish a clear chain of custody and saved them countless hours of work copying video evidence discs.
