iFORMation™ – Police Services

Note: The following customer overview is based on a case study prepared by Anoto and an Anoto business partner based in the United Kingdom.

The Customer

Dorset Police is the Home Office police force with the responsibility of policing the English county of Dorset. The force has an establishment of over 2500 staff including police officers, special constables and civilian staff. The force is divided into four Divisions, these being Western Division (covering the Western half of the county), Eastern Division (covering the Eastern part of the county) and a separate division for each Poole and Bournemouth, the two main urban areas of the county police force

Challenge

When a crime scene officer attended an incident, they had to complete the paperwork at the site, transport it back to the station and manually enter the data from the form into the police database. This meant that there was a significant delay between the crime and the availability of the data to the rest of the force which created further delays in the investigation of a case. Also the accuracy of the data was not as good as it needed to be.

Solution

The Dorset Police began a pilot for six crime scene investigators whereby the data was entered onto a digital paper form at the crime scene. The investigator then ticked the form and the data was immediately transferred back to HQ. The trial proved that the technology not only reduced the double inputting of scene examination reports, but that the information from crime scenes was made available to an investigator within minutes of the evidence being recovered. This had extensive benefits in major crime investigation where early results/information can prevent many man-hours of investigation work and assist the Senior Investigating Officer direct his lines of inquiry. Due to the success of the pilot, the system was rolled out to all of the crime scene investigators and the functionality was extended to integrate the data directly into the force computer system.