NICE, Winner of the 2016 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Platinum Award for Best Investigation System, has earned the CJIS ACE Compliance Seal from Diverse Computing for its NICE Investigate solution.
The CJIS ACE Compliance Seal is awarded to agencies and companies that have demonstrated an executive commitment to and have real-world working knowledge of FBI CJIS Security Policy compliance and its criticality to the law enforcement community.
NICE Investigate is the first digital investigation and case management solution created specifically to help law enforcement agencies automate their collection, analysis and sharing of case evidence.
It puts evidence into context based on time, sequence and location to help investigators understand the ‘who, what, when, where and why’ so they can close more cases faster, and facilitate successful prosecutions.
(Find out how NICE Investigate, automates and expedites the entire digital investigation process, helps investigators close more cases faster, leading to more successful prosecutions. Courtesy of NICE Systems and YouTube)
NICE Investigate’s Three Portals
The NICE Investigate platform is comprised of three main application portals: the Public Portal, the Investigation Portal and the Prosecution Portal.
All three portals are accessible via a web browser so no software installation is necessary.
The entire solution runs on the Microsoft Azure Government cloud platform which means law enforcement agencies can use this comprehensive, scalable, CJIS-compliant cloud-based solution to manage all of their day-to-day investigations and digital evidence.
The Public Portal allows citizens to electronically and securely share tips, photos and video with police departments.
It also provides businesses and residents with a virtual place to easily register their private CCTV cameras so that investigators have a better understanding of what cameras are located within the area of an incident.
The primary portal is the Investigation Portal. This is where investigators collect, analyze and share evidence, and build their cases.
By putting investigators in control of evidence, NICE Investigate makes them more efficient and effective crime solvers.
Finally, the Prosecution Portal saves investigators valuable time by enabling them to easily and securely share entire case files or specific items within a case, with collaborating investigators, the chain of command, or a Prosecuting Attorney for filing consideration.
NICE Investigate streamlines the investigative process from end-to-end. Here’s how.
Evidence Collection
First, let’s examine how investigators gather evidence today. It’s a very manual and time-consuming process.
For many departments, it typically involves logging on to a dozen or more systems, sending emails, placing phone calls, filling out paperwork, or even driving across town to pick up evidence.
As it’s being gathered, the evidence is burned onto CDs, DVDs or USB drives, which are then added to a paper case folder.
If CCTV is involved, investigators physically have to canvas an area, download any video they find, and bring it back to the office.
Most of the time, the captured public CCTV video requires a proprietary player, which means investigators can’t play the video from their office computers.
Additional handling by a video specialist could be required just to make the video playable, which adds even more time to the process.
NICE Investigate streamlines the evidence collection process by connecting to and collapsing available data silos into one interface.
The technology provides a one-stop shop for gathering evidence – the investigator doesn’t have to spend time logging on to all of the individual systems, or traveling to different locations to manually collect evidence to build a case.
In addition to simplifying access, the technology is able to search across all connected systems for evidence.
NICE Investigate’s data correlation engine brings evidence that’s potentially relevant to a case to the investigator.
The investigator is then able to review the evidence, and selectively add it to his virtual case folder.
With so many data silos, and data that’s not always easily searchable, an investigator can overlook a crucial piece of evidence in a case.
NICE Investigate’s powerful search function allows investigators to conduct a single search across all structured and unstructured data sources – databases, narratives from CAD comments, incident reports, FI cards, reports and documents, and more – to uncover hidden evidence and connections.
Let’s say, for example, a witness in a homicide investigation said they saw a panel van with “Joe’s Plumbing” marked on the side, fleeing the scene.
By adding “Joe’s Plumbing” to a key word search within the NICE Investigate solution, all connected sources – from incident reports in the CAD system to tagged crime scene photos and witness statements – would be searched for the words “Joe’s Plumbing.”
By converting speech to text, NICE Investigate can even make audio and video files searchable. So, for example, 911 calls and interview room recordings could be searched for the words “Joe’s Plumbing” as well.
For evidence that’s not directly accessible (for example the enhancement of a digital photograph or a specific test on a collected piece of evidence), investigators can initiate and track evidence requests using built in workflows, and receive automatic notifications when those requests are fulfilled.
Finally, these days, citizens are becoming more crucial to crime-solving.
NICE Investigate’s secure public portal gives police departments an easy way to crowdsource video, photos and tips.
Private businesses can also use the portal to register their CCTV cameras and provide contact information.
Cameras are geo-located on a map so detectives can get an instant view of which cameras are in the area of an incident, without have to physically canvas the area on foot.
Evidence Analysis
Investigators need to accurately reconstruct a crime using all of the collected evidence so they can show a sequence of events and build a narrative for the prosecutor.
The problem is – the collected evidence is often disjointed, because it’s recorded in different formats and stored on lots of CDs, DVDs and USB drives.
This makes it difficult to piece the evidence together and put it into proper context.
Investigators often have to switch back and forth between disks with different pieces of evidence, or spend hours editing, clipping, even building custom presentations to “tell the story.”
NICE Investigate easily solves these problem too. With NICE Investigate’s visualization tools, an investigator can select any number of media files from the virtual case folder, add them to a timeline, visualize them, and synchronously play them back.
This could include CCTV video from different sources and in different formats, body-worn video, in-car video, 911 audio or radio recordings, even videos and photos taken on citizen smartphones.
Videos are also automatically transcoded to a playable format, while the original media files are retained intact.
For example, a detective working on a convenience store robbery could synchronously playback CCTV video from inside the store, video from a camera across the street, and 911 calls indicating shots fired, to see and hear what happened from every possible angle.
NICE Investigate also has built-in mapping capabilities which means an investigator can view case evidence according to its geolocation on a map.
By adding layers of potentially relevant information, such as ALPR reads or additional sources of CCTV cameras, additional potential evidence can come into clearer view.
By uncovering relevant evidence and helping Investigators visualize it in useful ways, NICE Investigate can help investigators close cases that could otherwise go unsolved.
Evidence Sharing
The final step in the process involves sharing case evidence. The burden of physically duplicating all of the evidence, stored on CDs, DVDs and USB drives, onto more CDs, DVDs and USB drives, falls on the investigator.
Often, evidence has to be copied in triplicate, then painstakingly reviewed by the investigator’s chain of command, before being hand-delivered to the prosecutors for filing consideration.
NICE Investigate’s virtual case folders make sharing simple. Instead of copying evidence, an investigator can securely and electronically share evidence with prosecutors, simply by emailing a link to a digital case file.
The system automatically tracks who accessed which files and when to protect evidence integrity.
Finally, a prosecutor’s ability to “tell the story” of the case is vitally important for the jury’s understanding.
With NICE Investigate, prosecutors are also able to visualize evidence in ways that make it more impactful and easily understood, and that in turn increases the likelihood of a successful prosecution.
(Emergency communications centers and police departments everywhere are investing in digital initiatives – but few of them are achieving their full potential. Learn how NICE Systems’ public safety solutions help 911 centers and police departments reconstruct and understand the who, what, when, where, why of incidents to improve emergency communications and close more cases faster. Courtesy of NICE and YouTube)
CJIS ACE Compliance Seal
Running on the Microsoft Azure Government cloud, NICE Investigate is the industry’s most comprehensive, scalable, CJIS-compliant cloud-based solution for managing investigations and digital evidence.
NICE was awarded the CJIS ACE Compliance Seal after completing a rigorous evaluation with Diverse Computing’s CJIS ACE (Audit and Compliance Experts).
The CJIS ACE Division of Diverse Computing offers the first and only industry-standard process for evaluating CJIS-related products and services to ensure they align with the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy (which governs the creation, viewing, modification, transmission, dissemination, and storage of sensitive Criminal Justice Information).
During this comprehensive and intensive in-depth CJIS ACE evaluation, Diverse Computing’s CJIS Audits Compliance team conducted a 553-point review of NICE Investigate, covering all of the key FBI CJIS policy areas.
“Ensuring compliance with the FBI CJIS Security Policy is an in-depth, comprehensive, and on-going process that requires scrutinizing everything from software design and implementation to physical security and training,” said William M. Tatun, Director – CJIS ACE Division, Diverse Computing.
“By engaging with Diverse Computing’s CJIS ACE Division, NICE has taken the necessary steps to develop an in-depth understanding and implementation of the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy requirements.”
“NICE has been awarded the CJIS ACE Compliance Seal indicating that they are ‘CJIS Ready,’ conveying to current and future clients their commitment to CJIS compliance.”
“NICE recognizes that CJIS compliance is a critical requirement for our law enforcement customers, but navigating these requirements can be quite complex,” said Christopher Wooten, Executive Vice President, NICE.
“We’re delighted to have been awarded the CJIS ACE Compliance Seal for NICE Investigate from Diverse Computing’s CJIS ACE team who collectively have over 45 years’ experience in this area. NICE is fully committed to helping our law enforcement customers achieve CJIS compliance, while improving case closure rates and investigative outcomes.”
The CJIS ACE Division of Diverse Computing addresses CJIS compliance, audit, and business processes of organizations by utilizing nationally recognized experts who were contributors and practitioners of the CJIS Security Policy and its application in the real world.
NICE is the worldwide leading provider of both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions that empower organizations to make smarter decisions based on advanced analytics of structured and unstructured data.
NICE helps organizations of all sizes deliver better customer service, ensure compliance, combat fraud and safeguard citizens. Over 22,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, are using NICE solutions.
