Our office is getting inundated with more and more digital evidence – from photos and audio and video recordings from the police departments (in various formats), to all sorts of stuff from non-law enforcement sources. Some of this stuff includes 911 dispatch recordings; news or media footage; traffic camera footage; cell phone photos, text messages, voice mails, e-mails, chat room logs, or attachments received from victims; store surveillance videos; recorded jail telephone calls… it goes on and on. Did I mention the competing video formats used by the different agencies?

Anyway, the amount of digital evidence we’re receiving is constantly increasing, and it’s getting very hard to stay on top of it all. We need to improve how we (1) catalog and maintain this information, (2) screen it and make the discoverable parts available to defendants, and (3) edit, redact, display or use this stuff in court so it’s as simple as possible for us (and also for the jurors) to view or hear what we need to.

I’m very curious what steps other offices are taking to deal with this situation. Our county probably won’t pay for a dedicated tech to handle this stuff full-time (which is what I think we need). Short of that, though, how are you all handling the screening, conversion, storage, backing up, duplicating, and so on of all these things? Right now we’re just building up bunches and bunches of CDs and DVDs, along with whatever files are e-mailed to individual prosecutors or investigators on their computers. This is not a good system. I am open to suggestions for hardware, software, or anything else that would be helpful.

We asked our commissioners court for a new position, titled "forensic communications assistant." Fortunately, they approved it, and we hired Su Knight, who has been the expert-in-training (it takes quite a bit of education to keep up with all this stuff).

I recommend you give her a call at 512-943-1234.

Whether you get a new position or not, you need to identify someone who can learn and manage these digital materials. Perhaps your IT department can help. Or, maybe you already have someone on staff with an interest or skill in the area. Until we hired someone, I tried to keep up and advise our staff on how to use the digital materials. But, eventually, there were too many different formats, too much time needed to import, export and edit, so we got a new position. And not a moment too soon.

[This message was edited by JB on 09-19-08 at .]

[This message was edited by JB on 09-19-08 at .]

In addition to a technician, there is software available now that will allow you to attach files including digital images, videos, phone calls etc. to the case that it belongs with. Some of the counties that have been with TSG/Tyler Technologies are upgrading to an Odyssey package with these capabilities. Williamson County is only a few months away from the conversion of criminal cases and the sheriff's package. I'm really looking forward to it.

One more step towards being paperless, cd-less, whatever....