Galveston County simplifies evidence management
Galveston County in Texas covers a combined area of 875 square miles and is home to 350,000 people. Learn how the DA and Sheriff’s Office enhanced the collection, sharing, and protection of evidence.
The County
Galveston County in Texas covers a combined area of 875 square miles and is home to 350,000 people. With more than 400 miles of beaches and shoreline, Galveston also welcomes an average of 2 million visitors each year. And, with its world-renowned medical facilities and thriving petrochemical and aerospace industries, the County is also a great place to live and work. Galveston County law enforcement, which consists of over 20 different agencies, works tirelessly to keep everyone safe.
The challenge
With the rapid increase in the digital evidence being collected, it was becoming a challenge for the Sheriff’s Office to manage all of its data. In parallel, the Galveston District Attorney’s (DA) Office was adapting to new discovery guidelines introduced by the Texas State Legislature in 2014. The new law stipulated that prosecution offices must share all items of evidence with defense attorneys before any plea or trial and must be able to prove what evidence was turned over and when.
The solution
All evidence in one place
Evidence including crime scene photos, interviews, patrol photos from cell phones, and all reports and records is stored in Clearance, and ‘all of the data we need is right there at our fingertips,’ said Bell.
Easy mobile uploads
Using the mobile app, patrol officers can take photos with their cell phones and upload them directly into Clearance. This has streamlined the evidence collection process and increased accountability.
Simple evidence sharing
‘Clearance allows us to quickly locate the requested information. Then, we give the requestor access to the information by sending a link that can be used to download the material,’ said Bell.
Chain of custody reporting
With the click of a button, the DA can generate a list of everything that has been turned over, when it was turned over, and when the evidence was downloaded or viewed by the defense counsel.
“Clearance is now our overall case file with everything in it, including all of our evidence and case-related documentation. Where we used to keep paper records, we now store everything digitally in Clearance.”
Captain Mike Bell, Identification Division Commander
Results
When the Sheriff's Office first deployed Clearance, they had to migrate 7 terabytes (TB) of historical data to the cloud, including all the collected and stored evidence from past cases. To migrate the data, Genetec developed an automated program to upload everything in the existing folder to an identically named case file in Clearance. Due to bandwidth limitations, they ran the program at night and completed the migration in under one month with minimal problems.
Today, Galveston Sheriff’s Office is securely storing over 80 terabytes of data in the cloud using Clearance. The digital evidence management system makes it easy for the Division to locate information and share it with third parties. One of those parties is the DA’s Office who also installed Clearance. The solution has also allowed them to establish a clear chain of custody and saved them countless person-hours copying disk after disk of video evidence.