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TASER announces new solution for managing interview room videos in the cloud

Axon Interview includes a dedicated interview room appliance that works in parallel with HD cameras and microphones to give the best possible video and audio quality

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Axon Interview includes a dedicated interview room appliance that works in parallel with HD cameras and microphones to give the best possible video and audio quality and ultimately allows police to conduct interviews more efficiently.

Image Courtesy of TASER International

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Just days before thousands of police executives gather in Chicago for the 122nd Annual International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference (IACP 2015), vendors in the law enforcement space are beginning to issue announcements about new products they’d be displaying on the Expo floor. TASER International was one of the first to send out a press release, indicating that the company will expands its AXON Platform with a new interview room solution.

Axon Interview includes a dedicated interview room appliance that works in parallel with HD cameras and microphones to give the best possible video and audio quality and ultimately allows police to conduct interviews more efficiently. For $99 per month, agencies receive unlimited data storage for each camera installed as part of the Axon Interview solution. The hardware and installation fees vary by size and scale of the department.

Axon Interview is a touch screen interface running on a touch panel display in front of each interview room. This allows officers to enter the proper metadata and complete the interview with all of the pertinent information. Once the interview is finished the video and meta-data are securely pushed to Evidence.com for storage and management.

From the Interview Room to the Cloud
“This really stems from our MediaSolv acquisition,” TASER International CEO Rick Smith told Police1. “Many of our customers were telling us, ‘We’ve got system A over here and we’d like to move that over to what you’re doing with Evidence.com.’ We started meeting with MediaSolv to talk about integrating systems and we decided the better way to do it was just to make the acquisition. We’ve repurposed MediaSolv interview rooms to be able to push data right to the cloud, so they can get all the benefits and strengths of Evidence.com that they have with AXON.”

The new offering essentially expands the capabilities of TASER’s Prosecutor product (announced earlier this year), which enables prosecutors to manage all types of digital evidence from law enforcement for free on a standard license. With the basic system prosecutors are able to electronically provide discovery and enact their own retention policies and audit controls. For $39 per user per month prosecutors can purchase a “Pro License,” which unlocks premium features like redaction, advanced reporting, and other enterprise features.

“Up until now, prosecutors had to get everything on disc. We’ve got seamless case sharing, so you can take all those videos, put them in a case folder, and share it with the DA and you’re done. You don’t have to be burning discs and running stuff around,” Smith said. “Most of our customers don’t want to be in the business of running complicated technology systems, so as the Evidence.com and AXON platform build out, they should be able to just plug in whatever data source into it and we’ll handle that seamlessly.”

One Customer Right Out of the Gate
The new interview room product has already been selected for use by the Milwaukee Police Department (which announced an order for 1200 Axon Flex and Body cameras with a five-year subscription to Evidence.com earlier this year) in an effort to move to one solution for managing their digital evidence collected from body-worn cameras and interview room interviews. MPD anticipates utilizing Axon Interview in beginning in early 2016.

“The Milwaukee Police Department is always seeking ways to improve our workflow process and efficiency,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said in the TASER announcement. “We look forward to deploying one solution for managing digital evidence collected from our body-worn cameras and interview rooms.”

Doug Wyllie writes police training content on a wide range of topics and trends affecting the law enforcement community. Doug was a co-founder of the Policing Matters podcast and a longtime co-host of the program.

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