How Speech Analytics Can Help PSAPs and Law Enforcement

Written by KOVA Corp

When it comes to criminal investigations, law enforcement needs every helpful tool it can get.

From mobile voice recording apps like KOVA’s SilentPartner to the multi-media recording system, Audiolog for Public Safety, there are many recent technological advancements that are helping police officers, detectives, and other public safety officials do their jobs even better.

Speech Analytics Makes It Easier to Analyze Trends

One you may have heard about is speech analytics software. What speech analytics software does is convert audio recordings, like 911 calls, into indexed, searchable data. This allows investigators, police officers, and others to identify trends across calls by noting the frequency of specific words, as well as where they’re used in relation to other words.

What makes it more than just simple word-identification, however, is the fact that words are indexed for content and meaning, making correlations between calls and incidents easier to spot.

For example, if a certain district with known gang activity is experiencing a high number of shootings, investigators could predefine words—the names of various gangs, for example—and enter them into the speech analytics database. By being able to see when and how often a particular gang is mentioned, they may gain a new level of insight into their investigation.

This feature is especially helpful with 911 calls, since the caller is often agitated or frantic, and can hardly be expected to discuss a possible root cause or previous, similar issue while on the phone.

Using Speech Analytics to Help Finish an Investigation

One successful use of speech analytics occurred at a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in Pennsylvania, when the software was used to investigate a series of porch fire arson incidents that had been happening across the city. As part of the investigation, the local fire department compiled a list of all the addresses that had been affected.

Then using speech analytics, law enforcement was able to identify similar incidents that had not already been included in the list of addresses. This allowed them to see the bigger picture, ultimately making for a quicker end to the investigation.

Another important benefit of speech analytics software is that by making trends visible, it can help police initiate a proactive response earlier than they might have otherwise. Sometimes the information may even allow them to take preventive actions.

You can learn even more about speech analytics software by reading our white paper on the subject.

Other Analytics Tools

Speech analytics has actually been in commercial use for more than a decade, but it’s only recently been put into place in the public safety realm. And now, analytics software is being used for more than just audio recordings.

Take video analytics. This software can scan surveillance footage for a particular person or thing, based on an uploaded photo or user-generated image. Some software is even able to filter out environmental factors like lighting or background movement. This can mean a drastic reduction in the time investigators have to spend manually scanning video for a face or car that there’s no guarantee of spotting anyway.

And now that there are text-to-911 services in certain cities, text analytics are emerging as well. These software systems analyze key words and phrases, just like speech analytics, but they can also analyze things like text response time. When used in concert with other analytics systems, text analytics can provide useful information.

As useful as all these tools can be, without properly trained users, they can result in a flood of data that complicates, rather than simplifies, an investigation. If your PSAP is implementing speech analytics software, it’s vital to make sure that those using it receive good training on how to use this important tool.

If you’re in need of speech analytics or other types of software for your PSAP, take a look at KOVA’s Verint Media Recorder for Public Safety. This public safety software solution includes a wide range of features: performance management, quality assurance, speech analytics, incident investigation and analytics, workload forecasting and staff scheduling, staff coaching and training, and citizen surveys. Contact KOVA today!

Sources:

https://www.fcc.gov/text-to-911

http://www.officer.com/article/12031164/the-increasing-importance-of-analytics-in-law-enforcement

http://www.kovacorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Kova_SpeechAnalytics.pdf

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