Fire Department of New York selects NICE to digitally transform its evidence management
NICE announced that the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) has selected NICE Investigate, one of the solutions in NICE’s Evidencentral platform, to digitally transform how it manages digital evidence used in fire investigations.
The FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Investigation will leverage NICE Investigate to digitally transform how it collects, analyzes, and shares digital evidence, and to investigate and bring cases involving suspicious fires to resolution faster.
The Fire Department of New York is the largest fire department in the United States and second largest in the world and is universally recognized as the world's busiest and most highly skilled emergency response agency, responding to millions of emergency calls annually.
Part of the Evidencentral platform, the NICE Investigate cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) digital evidence management solution digitally transforms how investigators receive, interact with, manage, and share digital evidence.
NICE Investigate also features built-in AI and automation capabilities for object detection and redaction, automated case building, video and audio transcription, optical character recognition (OCR), finding evidence connections, and analytics.
“As a technology partner to the Fire Department of New York for two decades, NICE is thrilled to continue to support the FDNY through this digital transformation initiative. Technology is essential to modern-day fire departments, and the FDNY is among the most technologically advanced agencies in the nation,” said Chris Wooten, executive vice president, NICE. “With the addition of NICE Investigate, the FDNY Bureau of Investigations will now have one place to manage and store growing digital evidence, and the ability to conduct more efficient and effective fire investigations. Investigators will also be able to share digital evidence with prosecutors through a more streamlined process, and sooner, in support of New York State’s stringent discovery laws.”
The FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Investigation conducts criminal investigations into thousands of arsons and fire-related crimes annually, including fatal and suspicious fires.
This requires investigators to collect and analyze many different types of digital evidence, from crime scene photos and computer aided dispatch (CAD) records to 911 calls and CCTV video. Currently, this process requires investigators to log into different systems, submit manual requests, and physically drive to the location of fires to canvas for and collect CCTV video.
By integrating with FDNY’s case management and electronic records request systems, NICE Investigate will consolidate evidence into a single pane of glass, giving investigators one place to collect, analyze, store, and manage case evidence, including CAD records, interview room video, lab reports, crime scene photos, and supplemental reports.
Investigators can also leverage NICE Investigate to request copies of 911 calls, or to reach out to businesses or private citizens with registered CCTV or ring cameras to request CCTV video. Uploaded videos are automatically converted to a playable format.
NICE Investigate’s workflow and automation technology will also make it easier for the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Investigation team to share digital evidence with law enforcement partners and prosecutors. Investigators can share case files and digital evidence simply by sending a secure link. NICE Investigate automatically tracks when evidence is received and opened.
To ensure a seamless migration to these new capabilities, NICE will be ingesting and indexing digital evidence related to current and ongoing fire investigations (from the FDNY’s current legacy system) into NICE Investigate case folders in the cloud.
For more information about this news, visit www.nice.com.