From docking to live streaming, next generation body worn video

Chief Superintendent Chris Hardy of Lancashire police shares how his force is evolving its use of technology to improve investigation and the victim experience with the next phase of body worn video meaning they will be able to live stream and no longer have to wait to dock cameras to access valuable footage.

Hardy is head of corporate services, where he looks after the force’s change programmes, corporate development, force governance, and heads up the force control room and digital so that includes all public contact including 999. He says that financial pressures and the drive to do more with less are ever present, adding: “Now, that isn’t always in terms of cash flow savings that can be in cost avoidance and improving our processes and policies.”

“So that’s where our use of technology comes in. Really, it is for us to look at what tech is out there that can help us do the job we’re currently doing better, more efficient, or, ideally both. We want to know where we can get those savings.”

The volume of information that one police force must manage is enormous and comes from many sources and is dealt with through myriad systems, many of which may not even ‘talk’ to each other. So, what is Chris doing to improve efficiency of information flow?

He says that the force is fortunate, as it has in his words, quite a mature and advanced technological strategy led by its ICT teams to ensure interoperability across systems. Crucially, he adds, this was the same approach the force took to its public engagement portal which has just migrated onto the Single Online Home system in use by the majority of police forces.

“The victim journey is really important as well,” says Chris, “because we’re all now judged on our phone in our pocket, so we wanted our systems that the public use to be as intuitive and as user friendly as they can be.  This is the same for our staff.” Police officers use mobile phones out on the beat, the days of paper notebooks and pens are long gone, so how do officers record their interactions with the public?

Chris explains: “We now have the ability for all our officers to work in an agile way. We’ve had that for some time, and as you would expect, it keeps evolving and keeps developing as the technology forges forward.”

“I’d say 99% of all our forms our response officers use on a daily basis are now electronic, and they’re now digitised, and all in the palm of the police officer’s hand.”

Lancashire was an early adopter of the digital policing app Pronto from Motorola Solutions and has recently extended its contract with this supplier to 2029. Pronto allows officers to access records and file reports from anywhere, replacing traditional police notebooks. Replacing a physical notebook suggests it’s all about text, but Chris expands with enthusiasm on this point, saying that audio and video are critical parts of evidence gathering and easily captured, tagged and integrated with text using Pronto.

And of course body worn video is now common in police forces, with Lancashire having used it for the last ten years. Chris recalls, “We’ve had a form of body worn camera from the very early days of head cams, where they were at the side of our heads, right the way through to where we are now. It allows us to capture the best evidence of the journey of a crime.”

“Video paints such a rich picture of the situation, so much more than we could ever do with just a written statement.”

At the moment, Lancashire officers capture body worn video footage and need to come back to the police station dock that camera, upload the file and make it quickly available on one of the force’s systems for people to view. Chris says that they are now looking to make footage live streamed and not have to wait for the physical device to be returned and docked in a police station.

He looks back at the civil disorder from last summer for an example of where live streaming would have been helpful or other major incident type events.

“We believe, as a force, it would have been really useful for our commanders, our civil commanders, in particular, who would have been back at the control centre here in Police HQ to be able to see the live streamed footage and get full situational awareness.”

He explains: “We’re really keen for it to be used in particular circumstances, rather than it being widespread. And we feel the command and control area where command decisions may need to be made lends itself nicely to this kind of area of work. As a result, one of our Commanders based in the control room would actually see that stream coming in as it happens.”

“So, for argument’s sake, if I’m the strategic firearm commander, I would be able to log on to my laptop or desktop computer and through our normal video management systems, sit there and watch that live stream.”

The force is soon to upgrade its Motorola Solutions VB400 body cameras with the company’s V500 body cameras to give their control rooms live-streaming visibility of incidents as they unfold. The Constabulary has also deployed Motorola Solutions’ M500 in-car video system across their fleet of police vehicles.

Armed with this new equipment, the force can look to fulfil its ambitions to live stream and continue to be a progressive force. Chris says Lancashire Police wants to embed technology to make the service it delivers much more efficient, much more effective, and crucially improve what it can do for victims, to make sure that they are dealt with as effectively and as swiftly as possible.

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