WA Police Forensic Solutions
Over the past five years, WA Police has increasingly looked to ICT as a way to work smarter, safer and more productively. With Telstra's Next IP® and Next G® networks providing the connectivity, Police recently launched two key innovations: the Concept Car, which has increased the number of police inquiries from 300 to 10,000 per car per day; and the Forensics Solutions, which enables forensics investigators in the field to examine and match finger print information collected at the scene in minutes rather than days.
Transcript
Greg Italiano - Executive Director, WA Police
WA’s a big place and I think you almost have to drive it in order to appreciate sometimes what that distance means. From Kalumburu in the north to Eucla on the border, three to four thousand kilometres and not a lot in between…
If we have a homicide in Kununurra, then I want the forensic response and the investigative response and the support response to be as good as they get, if that particular crime was to occur in Perth.
Snr Sergeant Peter Lydiate - Finger Print Bureau
At the end of the day everything we do usually gets put before a court, so forensics for me is a method of examining a crime scene. In the old system we had to travel, we had to convey that information manually generally back to the location, or have it transmitted in some other form, but we didn’t have that available to us at the crime scene
A/Assistant Commissioner Jon Tuttle - Judicial Services
Now because everything goes in at the point of contact, it’s just a press of a button and out comes your disclosure report.
Superintendent Lance Martin - Program Director Business Technology Delivery, WA Police
One of the main advantages of that is to be able to attend a scene and to take all of the information associated with that forensic investigation, the various exhibits and associate them with the case file, photographs, other related information, and progress that at the time. The importance of that is that officers are able to at that point of origin key in information once and update all of our related systems.
Assistant Commissioner Craig Ward - WA Police
One of the critical aspects is the ability to transmit information in almost re-real time to people that are able to deal with that. Without the backbone that Telstra provides we wouldn’t be able to get critical forensic evidence to subject matter experts to allow them to do analysis and very quick turnaround so that the investigators in the field are able to make some critical decisions.
Peter
Once the image arrives at the Fingerprint Bureau and the officers have uploaded it, within 30 minutes we can actually provide information back to the officers at the crime scene…
productivity gains turns days to minutes. In the old days it would’ve taken them longer than that to drive back to the office with that material prior to an examination.
Jon
We can have situations where we have officers 3,000 kilometres away in Kununurra; we can quality assure their work by through the Next G® network sending images through to Midland where we can have experts analyse their work.
Peter
To have a network that would supply that tool for us to transmit our information to our people, regardless of where they are in the state, is invaluable.
John
The analogy I can use is it’s like going from working with an abacus to a computer, it’s that different as to how we are going to operate. We have, we’ve gone forward so significantly.
Lance
Importantly it also links into some of our government partners that also do detailed forensic examination of items or scientific in-investigation of items. And being able to see the context by which those exhibits were taken makes their job far easier.
Craig
Yeah, we’ve got a strong relationship with Telstra. T-They’re in places that we are, which is important to us. It’s been a relationship developed over a long time and we’ve now got the capacity with Telstra, I know that I can pick up the phone and get a response from them as required, and that goes down to my team.
Greg
So for us, technology overcoming distance and time is really, really important, but it also sends a signal to the people who pay for us, the taxpayers, that we are serious about providing that level of service, no matter where you are.
And nothing makes my day more than to see our technology or innovations or things we’ve done being out there, being used, making a difference. Having police officers say to me this is great, this is helping, this is making a difference. That’s why I, that’s why I come to work. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I love it here!
