Developing an online tool for police to investigate crime expediently & efficiently.
doorvue
Working as a active magistrate of the UK judiciary my experience and knowledge has largely been focused on supporting other members of the bench by utilising IT best practise. I’ve used this to launch a number of software solutions within the UK Criminal Justice Network and along with my business parter Mark Grice we have taken these products to a global market.
There has been a number of incident that have required local forces to seek CCTV footage and seeking public help to provide footage, one recent incident was a detainee in police custody who after his initial 24 hours had their detention extended for superintendents custody extension for 12 hours to allow enquires to be undertaken.
Unfortunately this then required further time and the detainee was presented before myself and my bench for a decision to allow detention without charge for the continuation of enquiries to be undertaken diligently across 4 potential crime scene in a 5 mile radius to seek further CCTV evidence, doorbell footage collation and exhibiting. In this instance we heard the fact and authorised the detention, however this example highlighted the number of people involved in the process, costs of detention and the slow progress being made in the collection of vital evidence.
Supported by external funding we have been create the UK’s first bespoke designed and dedicated registry “doorvue”, backed with the experience of investigators, justices and secure software development experts we have been able to bring doorvue to life with the aim of cutting down time in investigations and evidence gathering to deliver justice expediently and reducing costs and time, this in turn will free up officers and skills to be re-deployed.
Developing the system
Our intention was to produce an accessible resource to assist police investigators with investigations and evidence gathering where an incident required the collection of CCTV, Video Doorbell footage and Dashcam footage, these would normally be required via a public appeal.
We took 3 incidents ranging from murder, missing person and anti social behaviour (ASB) that took place within 1 week period and tracked the time from alleged offence to appeal to the public for support of footage, we then sought advice from a working good of training and accredited investigators, barristers and KC’s members, each giving us invaluable insight to their individual area of expertise and combined with the tracking of time spent we were able to create a process to not only save time within the golden hours of incident but also reducing costs spent.
Once the data collection portal was created as management system was produced to give an investigator the ability to enter a crime reference number, specify an area and radius and then display who has devices within that area, then have the ability contact owners of devices to request footage directly and give them a dedicated link to upload the footage, combined with a MG11 statement of them evidencing said footage to the authorised investigator.
Mass or individual contact could be made via email or text message (SMS), this process will speed up the process apposed to using social media to call to the general public.
Not only can this be used for reactive police but proactive police work such as researching an area, this can be done via the doorvue system as we are compliant with the rules outlined within Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA).
The doorvue registration is FREE to register your device and this be accessed via: https://app.doorvue.com/
Written by Andrew Robbins .JP