Choosing the Right Police Evidence Management Software for Your Agency

This blog will explore the key elements to consider when selecting digital evidence management software for police and public safety organizations. It will cover essential features like secure evidence handling, chain of custody, integration capabilities, compliance requirements, and data protection measures to help law enforcement agencies make informed decisions.In today’s digital age, software isn’t just an option, it’s a necessity. Organizations that fail to adopt the right technologies risk falling behind, and this holds especially true for public safety and law enforcement agencies. When it comes to managing critical digital evidence, relying on outdated methods is no longer feasible.

“Police have been huge CD purchasers because they’ve had to put digital evidence onto discs and physically take them to other agencies,” says Alison Brooks, Research Vice President at IDC. This outdated approach not only slows down investigations but also increases the risk of evidence mishandling.

That’s where police evidence management software comes in. Designed to streamline the collection, storage, and sharing of digital evidence, the right software can transform how agencies operate.

In this blog, we’ll explore the key features and considerations you should keep in mind when choosing evidence management software for your agency—ensuring you don’t miss any critical details in your decision-making process.

Why Digital Evidence Management Software  for Police Matters

Law enforcement agencies today collect evidence from more sources than ever before. Between body-worn cameras, in-car video systems, interview room recordings, 911 calls, surveillance footage, and smartphone submissions from the public, the volume of digital files has become unmanageable through traditional methods.

Without a centralized system, investigators waste hours tracking down footage, copying files across formats, and transporting physical media between departments. Prosecutors receive evidence through a patchwork of methods—discs, USB drives, email attachments, and cloud links—creating confusion and increasing the risk of misplaced or overlooked files.

A purpose-built DEMS eliminates these inefficiencies by consolidating all digital evidence into a single, secure platform. Investigators can search, review, and share files instantly, while maintaining the chain of custody required for court admissibility.

Essential Features to Look for in DEMS for Law Enforcement

Source: MotherJones

Every domain requires a set of predefined features to be present for a software tool to be adequate for use. The same goes for evidence software for police and law enforcement organizations, designated for the purpose of managing heaps of digital evidence. Some of these features are listed below:

1. The ability to integrate with other software in use of the department, to allow for data migration and sharing, and other miscellaneous purposes.
2. The platform should be agnostic to be able to ingest from multiple sources of digital evidence, to allow the police to gain the adequate data resources that might otherwise be wasted in physical collection of same.
3. The most crucial factor when it comes to digital evidence is its credibility. Preventing any breaches in the system through the efforts of hackers who may attempt to tamper with digital evidence is what makes or breaks a deal for digital evidence software. Tamper detection, and security mechanisms for prevention, are necessary for keeping the integrity of evidence intact.
4. Another element that makes evidence more credible and assists law enforcement officers with record keeping and documentation of digital evidence is a chain of custody, verifiable by the system itself.
5. Nobody wants to do transcription and translations manually anymore, therefore the evidence software for police forces must be accommodated to have features for transcription and translation services, preferably with support for multiple languages.
6. The feature to annotate critical, important or prioritized information in digital evidence files, particularly in video, to allow ease of quick access and retrieval.
7. Redaction is a necessity to meet the growing privacy concerns presented by the public, and hence to be compliant with several laws made to protect the same. For the purpose, the tool must have an automatic redaction feature, or minimally a manual redaction element, for all forms of data ingested into the system.
8. To limit uniform access to evidence files, users should be divided into various user roles and groups to segregate data access. Users must also go through a mechanism of authentication before being able to access any data.
9. Advanced sharing options that allow the user to have control over shared elements is a key factor when it comes to secure online video evidence sharing.
10. To prevent evidence misuse after disclosure in hearings, an evidence retention period is necessary to be specified by the system to have it purged from it.
11. The tool must ensure that the processes involved, and the evidence stored meets necessary compliance requirements.
12. The tool should have the flexibility to be deployed over cloud services, such as those with the most secure cloud providers – government cloud, as well as commercial cloud, as a SaaS solution, or on premise in a datacenter of your choice.

How VIDIZMO DEMS Addresses These Requirements

We gave you an idea of what optimal evidence software for police should be like.

Now let us tell you what VIDIZMO has to offer for such requirements with 20 years of video content management experience packed into a Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS).

• VIDIZMO DEMS can integrate with any Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), RMS or CMS with a wide range of SSO and IAM providers.
• VIDIZMO allows ingestion of evidence through various options, such as CAD, body-worn cameras, CCTV, Dashcams, etc.
• SHA cryptographic hash function in VIDIZMO DEMS allows you to detect any type of tampering with the evidence since the first time uploaded in the system.
• VIDIZMO DEMS offers chain of custody providing trail of activity in detail related to the digital evidence.
• Flagging of evidence is also allowed to have updates for any type of activities performed on the evidence to authorized individuals.
• VIDIZMO DEMS has a very comprehensive tool which can translate and transcribe simultaneously. It can transcribe up to 40 languages and translate transcriptions in up to 52 different ones. Multilingual transcription is also available in VIDIZMO DEMS.
• The audio/video can be synchronized with the transcription, which helps in searching the video for required segments.
• If you find something important during any audio/ video that may be beneficial in future while watching it again then you can highlight (annotate) areas to have a better understanding. Other people can just jump on to that section while watching that media as it is marked.
• VIDIZMO offers redaction with Artificial Intelligence which can automatically detect specific details and redact that in the whole media. You can redact faces, personal data, license plates or even bleep audio etc. before making it available to the public.
• Administrator can configure evidence access control by authenticating and authorizing roles based on designation or the level of clearance to that you have to a certain case file.
• VIDIZMO DEMS offers sharing of evidence securely on the same network.
• Specific regional IP can be restricted for sharing of evidence files.
• Blocking access to sharing outside of the premises/network is also available with VIDIZMO DEMS.
• Option to turn on reason provision before a shared file is accessed.
• Sharing restriction range from organizations, departments, groups, or a single link for all. Passwords can also be implemented for an additional layer of security.
• VIDIZMO DEMS offers multiple link creation for single evidence and provides user the ability to revoke access any time on a certain link so that others are not disturbed.
• In terms of evidence security and encryption, VIDIZMO has FIPS-compliant AES-256 encryption to secure the evidence in any one of the three states, i.e., evidence at rest, in transit (using TLS 1.2/1.3) and in use. VIDIZMO also offers optional DRM support.
• VIDIZMO provides a purge policy for evidence after they have been deleted. You can allocate a retention period to evidence and after its over the evidence is purged. This option allows you to retrieve any evidence that you may need after deleting it before the retention period is over.
• The deployment options VIDIZMO offers includes on-premises, on cloud (focused with Azure and AWS) and Azure Gov. and AWS Gov. cloud providers.
• The platform is designed to be compliant with FedRAMP, ITAR, EAR, etc. compliance.

Concluding our discussion, Digital Evidence Management is a requirement and a need for this era.

For that we would like you to try VIDIZMO DEMS on a 7-day trial and decide if you want to be the police using the latest of the technologies presented by the 21st century.

Making Your Decision

Selecting digital evidence management software is a significant decision that will affect your agency's operations for years to come. Take time to evaluate how each solution addresses your specific workflows, integration requirements, and compliance obligations.

Request demonstrations from vendors you're considering, and involve stakeholders from investigations, IT, legal, and administration in the evaluation process. Ask detailed questions about security certifications, support availability, and the vendor's track record with agencies similar to yours.