When “Why Record?” Became “What to Do with All that Footage?”
For years here at Cardinal Peak Technologies, we found ourselves asking law enforcement agencies if they recorded their interviews. More often than not, they said they did—but only when interrogating persons involved in major crimes like homicide, domestic violence, or child abuse. Even then, it was often only audio recordings meant to provide a record of the testimony and nothing more. Our biggest challenge was convincing them just how powerful recording both audio and video of their interviews could be. Driven by the ubiquity of both civilian cell phone footage and CCTV, it seems hard to believe that there was ever a time when custodial recordings weren’t standard practice.
Today, agencies are facing different challenges now that juries not only expect footage, but demand to see as much footage as possible. Interview recording is even required by law in many states. Now the question isn’t whether you should record, but what you should do with all that footage!
Some agencies choose to put their recordings on hard media like DVDs, CDs, Blu-rays, SD cards, and thumb drives, but this method not only requires physical storage space but comes with the added risk of loss or damage due to poor handling or fire. There’s also a concern about whether or not today’s technology will be playable in 20 years if it needs to be revisited during a cold case. The issues surrounding hard copies and physical storage have many agencies turning to cloud storage solutions, though depending on the provider, the cloud has its own risks. Will your footage be held hostage by the provider if you want to switch services? What about the added expense of “pay-to-play” footage?
At Cardinal Peak Technologies, we actively support our customers in exporting their recordings to whatever storage medium and provider they choose. For many agencies, CaseCracker’s auto-backup to an SD card or thumb drive provides sufficient redundancy, but more and more customers are opting instead for the added security of auto-exportation to a cloud solution. We are happy to assist your agency in determining the right solution for you, and starting in 2021, we will be offering an integrated engineering services package to help our customers in moving their recordings to the cloud provider that best fits their needs. This package includes one-on-one assistance from our expert engineers to create a custom solution built for you. We recognize that cloud storage solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all and we want you to feel confident and secure in the knowledge that you can access your footage easily whenever you need it.
Now that we have helped agencies understand why they should record, we look forward to helping them figure out the best ways to preserve this powerful evidence for years to come. After all, you never know when a decades-old interview could make the difference in a cold case—whether that’s clearing someone’s name or bringing someone to justice.
