Police reports contain a lot of sensitive information that needs to be redacted. Learn how redaction software for law enforcement helps redact sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) from police reports.
Police work is all action, right? Wrong. Most of an officer’s shift is spent writing police reports, such as traffic crash reports, arrest reports, incident reports, and crime reports. Report writing is so overwhelming that most of the police officers call it a “necessary evil,” according to an IACP document.
Imagine if hours are spent writing police reports, how much time would you take to redact? Because redacting police reports is a different ballgame, and you have only got a shift of 8 to 9 hours with too much on your plate already. Without AI-powered redaction software for law enforcement, you will waste more hours hiding what you’ve written.
Not only this, but manually redacting police reports can also lead to redaction failures. Think of the consequences of failing to redact the names of troopers from a spreadsheet based on crash report data and handing it over against a FOIA request. Penalties, reputational damage, and maybe suspension. Too much to lose.
Or think of another instance where police officers overlook the redaction of a sexual assault victim in their investigation report. Too much heat from pressure groups, the public, and the bad press.
This is why this blog post covers the need for redacting police reports and how AI-powered redaction software for police helps in redacting sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) and other details.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started by understanding the need for redaction software for law enforcement.
Police officers are not only entrusted with the physical safety of citizens. They are also the keepers of your sensitive data. This sensitive data is part of police reports, among other things.
Names of victims, witnesses, suspects, juveniles, vehicle license plate numbers, and all such details are recorded in different forms of police reports, such as traffic crash reports, incident reports, etc.
These reports are often requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) since requesters seek increased transparency from the law enforcement community. To ensure that such sensitive information is not disclosed while complying with public records requests, AI-powered redaction software for law enforcement becomes essential.
Other than FOIA and its state-level variants, law enforcement agencies are subject to other data privacy compliances as well. For instance, the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) prohibits motor vehicle departments (DMVs) from disclosing PII found in the narratives of traffic accident reports, such as:
With crimes and incidents happening on a large scale, ranging in thousands in a month, the volume of PII increases exponentially. Handling it manually is not an easy job for understaffed teams. This further increases the need for having AI-powered redaction software for police forces.
Only by automating redaction workflows can police officers reclaim the time that would otherwise be spent redacting PII from police reports and focus more on their core job, which they were hired to do – prevent crimes and make the community feel safe.
We’ve already explored why you need AI-powered redaction software for law enforcement to manage increasing workloads of hiding sensitive PII from a large pile of police reports. Now, let’s move on to understanding how automated redaction software helps you in ensuring the privacy of sensitive PII found in police reports.
With AI-powered redaction software for law enforcement, you can automate the redaction process, saving time and resources. Advanced law enforcement redaction software offers several document redaction capabilities for redacting PDF police reports, such as
Let’s dive a bit deeper to understand what these terms are:
Streaming data or near real-time redaction of police reports is one of the most crucial features to look for in redaction software for law enforcement. Law enforcement agencies usually have large volumes of data stored in their SQL databases that need to be redacted.
For instance, advanced redaction software can offer streaming data redaction using SQL connectors, facilitating secure connections to the agency’s database stored anywhere, whether on premises or in the cloud.
The required data can then be extracted in the form of CSV or text files, after which pattern recognition is applied for redactions. Pattern recognition will be discussed more in a later section.
Suppose you want to redact names, license plate numbers, location information, and other sensitive information from police reports that span tens of thousands of pages. How do you think you are going to achieve that without automation?
You can’t.
This is where pattern recognition plays its part. With pattern recognition, you don’t need to look for every piece of sensitive information. You can just select the patterns, and the software will do the rest of the tiring work for you.
For instance, to ensure you don’t miss out on leaving out the full or partial name of a witness, victim, or passenger, you can rely on pattern recognition to identify every name present in there and automatically highlight it from every page of the report document.
It’s not about a single police report. It’s always about hundreds of thousands of reports that need redaction within a specific deadline. And it’s not just one type of report. You are faced with, let’s say, traffic collision reports, crime reports, arrest reports, and more, each containing different types of sensitive details in different places.
Redacting police reports at a snail’s pace is not an option for you. This is why you need bulk redaction workflows to redact multiple reports at once using bulk document redaction software for law enforcement.
Although law enforcement agencies have gone through digitization, most of the records are still stashed in cabinets. When redaction is needed, these records and reports are scanned to digitize them.
However, redacting scanned documents requires specialized redaction software for law enforcement that offers OCR redaction capability because it is not possible to redact scanned documents just like regular PDF documents.
The above capabilities are essential for law enforcement redaction software to have. Without them, you risk missing out on crucial redactions and becoming vulnerable to penalties and costly lawsuits due to compliance violations.
Redacting sensitive information from police reports is not enough for law enforcement redaction software. What is the use of redaction software to protect sensitive information when it is not protected from unauthorized access? Right?
This is why data security is one of the most crucial aspects for law enforcement to look for in redaction software. Redaction software is not just for redacting information; it is also meant to securely store unredacted records and prevent them from unauthorized access.
The following are some of the security features that you should look for in redaction software:
Advanced redaction software for law enforcement offers secure, flexible deployment options, depending on the level of security and flexibility you want to deal with your sensitive data, such as:
For instance, law enforcement agencies looking for the utmost protection of their data opt for on-premises deployment since it gives them complete control over their data.
For those agencies that want to take advantage of both security and flexibility, opt for Government Cloud or a blend of both on-premises and private cloud, getting the best of both worlds (hybrid).
To comply with CJIS and NIST requirements, you need to opt for redaction software that offers advanced data encryption for both at-rest and in-transit data. Advanced redaction software for police officers offers AES-256 and TLS for at-rest and in-transit encryption, respectively.
This helps you protect data when it resides inside your redaction software or is shared with other stakeholders, such as partner agencies, courts, and traffic analysts.
Multifactor authentication is another crucial feature that prevents unauthorized access to your redaction software and the data inside it. Think of it as an additional layer of security that prevents unauthorized logins.
Another better way to ensure secure logins into your redaction software is by looking for law enforcement redaction software that offers single-sign-on (SSO) capability. SSO only allows users whom you authorize to enter your system using an Active Directory (AD).
This also prevents users from the hassle of remembering complex passwords every time they try to log in to the redaction software.
Granular access controls are used to limit the level of privilege given to users of your redaction software. For instance, a person not authorized to do redactions but to share the redacted file with a partner agency, traffic analyst, or any other stakeholder will have limited access.
An audit log offers a tamperproof record of all activities, including those related to redaction, to ensure that no misleading redactions are performed to cover up any information that should be made public.
Redacting police reports, such as traffic crash reports, incident reports, crime reports, and more, is essential for complying with public records requests and ensuring the privacy of information.
With advanced redaction software for law enforcement, you can easily redact sensitive PII, including names, license plate numbers, and more, from PDF documents and CSV files.
VIDIZMO Redactor is an AI-powered redaction software for law enforcement that helps you redact sensitive details, including personally identifiable information (PII), from police reports.
Our automated redaction software offers features such as pattern recognition, bulk document redaction, and OCR redaction. Moreover, VIDZIMO Redactor is highly secure with security features, such as flexible deployment (on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and SaaS), advanced encryption, granular access controls, and more.
Ready to see it in action? Get hands-on access without any strings attached. No credit card information is required, and you can contact us to learn more.
How does redaction software for law enforcement help in police report redaction?
Redaction software for law enforcement helps police officers redact reports using a host of features, such as pattern recognition, bulk document redaction, and OCR redaction. These features ensure that increasing redaction workloads are automatically managed.
Can VIDIZMO Redactor redact police reports?
Yes, VIDIZMO Redactor redacts police reports, including traffic crash reports, incident reports, arrest reports, crime reports, and more. You can easily redact sensitive personally identifiable information (PII), including names of victims, witnesses, passengers, locations, license plate numbers, and more.
Does VIDIZMO Redactor offer bulk document redaction?
Yes, VIDIZMO Redactor offers bulk document redaction, letting you redact multiple documents in a single go. With VIDIZMO Redactor, you can manage increasing document redaction workloads, thanks to a scalable and flexible solution.
Is VIDIZMO Redactor available on-premises?
Yes, VIDIZMO Redactor offers on-premises deployment as well as other deployment options, including cloud, hybrid, and SaaS. This helps you ensure both data security and scalability of your redaction solution.