The day began like any other. Daani Svonkin was at her desk, working as an analyst for the San Bernardino Police Department in California. It was December 2, 2015.
“That morning I was doing my normal thing,” Svonkin recalled. “I was kind of a one-person crime center for the vice and narcotics unit. I would monitor handheld radios and run license plates and phone numbers.”1
Then, she heard something that made her take notice.
“I heard a triple tone go out, which means shots fired,” she said. “Unfortunately that’s nothing unusual for us. You just kind of take note of it. But soon it escalated.”
In the ensuing moments, it became apparent that the department was facing something far outside the normal realm.
As most are probably now aware, that day, San Bernardino police were facing active shooters. By the time it was said and done, 14 civilians were dead and 22 others were injured, not including Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the married couple who committed the shootings and were killed later that day during an armed conflict with law enforcement. At the time, the events that day in San Bernardino marked the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut.2
San Bernardino police rightly received credit for quickly finding the shooters. But in the early moments, as law enforcement officers converged on the scene and began speaking to witnesses, they had extra help from Svonkin, who, in turn, had her own helper: data.
“Soon it became clear there were a large number of fatalities,” Svonkin said. “Around then I had a suspicious vehicle call. I ran the license plate, and it came back as a rental car vehicle. I had a contact at the rental car company, and he was able to fax me the rental contract. I saw that the name matched the name from the witness information we had [of the shooters]. My hands started to shake. I started to get really nervous.”3
For the next step, Svonkin turned to CLEAR, an investigation software application, which she used to determine the address of the individual, in the nearby city of Redlands. Officers raced to the address and within minutes surrounded and neutralized the suspects.
It happened that way because of data. Or, more accurately, harnessing the world’s fire hose of data and directing it in real time toward a real problem provided immediate benefits. Increasingly, technology companies are helping law enforcement agencies turn raw information into a final product that can help solve crimes more quickly and make day-to-day law enforcement tasks more efficient and vital.
“Complex analytics is one of those tools whose time has come,” said Bill Searcy, vice president of global justice, law enforcement, and border security at Unisys, a global information technology company based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. “It’s how we’re going to have to police in the future.”4
A Digital Officer Gateway
One of the products Unisys offers is Digital Investigator, a browser-based application that enables law enforcement professionals to enter all case-related data into one place. From that central point, data can be shared and viewed among a customizable group of stakeholders, including across agencies.
“It gives you the ability to mine data and format it properly,” Searcy said. “POLE is people, objects, locations, and events. That’s the term we use for how this works. You collect data on a traffic accident, let’s say, and you’ve got people involved, vehicle, location, at the corner of X and X, and an event. Digital Investigator handles all of that.”
The product is new in the United States, but a sister version enjoys substantial market saturation in the United Kingdom. There, an equivalent Unisys application called Home Office Large Major Enquiry System or HOLMES is in use by departments across the nation, including Scotland Yard. According to Searcy, London now experiences a 95 percent homicide clearance rate, with Scotland Yard leaders telling Searcy that “they wouldn’t have been able to solve crimes as much without [HOLMES].”
According to Searcy, Digital Investigator provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use gateway for capturing and managing data.
“It’s indexable and can be used in different ways, especially for analytics purposes,” Searcy said. “Complex cases have 100, maybe 1,000 pieces of information. Figuring out how each piece fits is important work.”
Other potential functions of the software include records management and social media content capturing.
“Digital Investigator is sort of a framework application,” Searcy said. “We took inspiration from a lot of very common apps and cobbled them all together. We can configure it in such a way where you get exactly what you need without having to pay for customization. If you just need records management, I say ‘great’ and give you the exact screens you want. Another place might have five or six detective bureaus that want to share. We want to make sure everyone can have a good, solid base.”
Different Tools for Different Data
Although there are no silver linings after a tragedy on the order of a mass shooting, Svonkin and the rest of the San Bernardino Police Department learned about the benefits of effective data management, in that case facilitated by CLEAR, which is a product of Thomson Reuters, a New York City–based information technology company.
“We think of it as a web of connectivity, so you can find the connections. It’s 10 degrees of separation,” said Leah Way, a senior marketer with Thomson Reuters. “You can go and do that deep digging.”5
At its core, CLEAR for law enforcement is a records search solution that brings proprietary and public records together in one tool. Uniting public and private records in a single program, officials said, can save officers substantial time.
Svonkin still recalls the details of that day as if they just happened, and now works as a senior consultant of client education for CLEAR. She said the software drills down to a more granular level of detail than competitors, ultimately translating to more meaningful, actionable information.
“I accessed CLEAR and ran [the shooting suspect’s] name and got a new address and a second phone number,” recalled Svonkin. “CLEAR provides something no one else provides. It provides source documentation and transparency. You isolate your target and you can see the source. So there’s a little bit more confidence. That currency of data really went a long way.”6
This event illustrates a dramatic application of data in law enforcement, but it’s far from the only one. Time and effort can be saved on a day-to-day basis with tools that better automate the process of compiling and presenting data in a range of common law enforcement functions.
For example, Accident Support Services International, a company based in Ontario, Canada, that facilitates automobile collision reporting for public safety and other sectors, has developed the Collision Reporting and Occurrence Management System (CROMS).7 Unlike typical collision reporting mechanisms, CROMS not only makes data entry easier but also streamlines the ability for officers to seek and find underlying patterns that might be contributing to collisions in a given area.
Another area of expansion is called the Internet of things. Connectivity is reaching beyond desktop computers and mobile devices and into things like medical equipment, televisions, and wearable technology like FitBit bracelets, among other examples.
In response to this, MSAB, a forensic technology company with U.S. headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, introduced MSAB Ecosystem, a suite of services designed to allow law enforcement to extract and manage data from devices beyond the cellphone.
“We offer powerful tools regardless of whether the device is a phone, USB memory, or some type of wearable fitness technology, and regardless of the type of encryption protecting the data,” wrote Joel Bollo, CEO at MSAB, in an emailed statement. “In this way, our law enforcement agencies can become more effective in their efforts to make society a safer place for us all.”8
No matter the specific need of a department when it comes to data, it is clear that the need to effectively navigate this area is only going to grow.
“The world is becoming more and more technology-driven and increasingly complex,” Bollo wrote. “With the continuing rapid pace at which new phones and apps are being developed, the challenges our customers face remain great. Law enforcement needs to be more effective in its efforts to solve crime.” ♦
Notes:
1Daani Svonkin (senior consultant, CLEAR, Thomson Reuters), telephone interview, February 16, 2017.
2Jon Schuppe, Elizabeth Chuck, and Helen Kwong, “San Bernardino Shooting Is Deadliest since Newtown,” NBC News, December 2, 2015.
3Svonkin, telephone interview, February 16, 2017.
4Bill Searcy (vice president, global justice, law enforcement, and border security, Unisys), telephone interview, February 14, 2017.
5Leah Way (senior marketer, Thomson Reuters), telephone interview, February 6, 2017.
6Svonkin, telephone interview, February 16, 2017.
7“About Us,” Accident Support Services International.
8Joel Bollo (chief executive officer, MSAB), email interview, March 3, 2017.
