An early pilot project

In 1999 the El Paso Police Department began a teleforensics pilot project. BRTC provided equipment and BRTC technology partner SNL created a prototype Investigator's Toolkit. This toolkit was first used for covert operations. A new version was tested at four homicide scenes to help prevent contamination of the crime scene.

"It's easy to make mistakes or to inadvertently alter or destroy evidence or a crime scene," says Commander Michael Czerwinsky, who's been with the El Paso department for 29 years. "You move something or touch something or do something with good intentions, not realizing you're contaminating a crime scene. Once you do that, it makes the case more difficult in court."

Evidence today is looked at on a microscopic level, he says. "In a perfect world, we would want to completely isolate the crime scene," he continues. "That's when the importance of teleforensics comes in. If you don't want people inside the crime scene, you have to find a way to project the information out so they can see what the crime scene looks like."

During the pilot project, homicide investigators, looking for clues and motive, and forensics personnel, looking for what equipment or experts they might need to process the scene, watched on a monitor as live video was recorded. In El Paso, five to 10 people, including supervisors, could be watching the video, maybe in an SUV not more than 1,000 feet away.

The homicide case in which the technology was first used proved the technology could work, says Czerwinsky, current BRTC advisory board member and former chairman. An investigator watching the video asked the person doing the videotaping to zoom in on mail on a dining room table and found a letter with an inmate number. Within a half-hour, investigators were able to determine at the scene, by making some phone calls and using a computer, that there was a relative incarcerated in another state for federal drug running charges. In a very short time, investigators found a link and a possible motive. This information that otherwise might not have been captured until a later time sped up the investigation, he says.

Areas in which the pilot proved the technology needs improvement include encryption, signal power and distance, among others.

Today, with national security a higher priority, Czerwinsky says BRTC and SNL put the El Paso project on hold. Meanwhile, he notes private industry has started developing pieces of the teleforensics puzzle. And, he continues speaking about teleforensics at conferences. He's observed that smaller agencies like the idea of teleforensics for major crime scenes because they don't have a lot of major crime scenes and they don't want to make mistakes. The larger agencies, on the other hand, he says seem to be interested more in a SWAT helmet-camera version of the video camera El Paso put together to give commanders more information to make crucial, potentially life-saving decisions in critical incidents. Commanders can see for themselves what's taking place, and the video captures the crime scene in front of the SWAT team members as they go through. That is helpful, he says, because the priority of SWAT teams is saving lives and eliminating threats - not preserving the crime scene.

Czerwinsky says the El Paso PD would like to continue research and development with BRTC and SNL. If they reach a point where they can offer the technology to other agencies, he says they're going to make sure it's tried and true. They're not going to put out a product that doesn't meet industry standards. Because this is a nonprofit endeavor, and there is less funding, he says the process is slower.

Teleforensics technology options

The Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science has been researching teleforensics for about three years and is a member of a NASA/National Institute of Justice consortium, which is also researching teleforensics. One of the institute's goals is to find ways to improve efficiency at crime scenes; and teleforensics fits this objective. The institute is a partner in a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Justice to develop a low-cost teleforensic capacity for law enforcement agencies. The goal of the research is to use commercially available products to transmit real-time, high quality images and data from a crime scene to a laboratory where experienced forensic investigators can review them and then direct crime operations. Future applications include real-time transmission and analysis of data images for fingerprints, cartridge casings, drugs and biometrics.

With teleforensics, forensic scientists throughout the world can be on the scene virtually, making suggestions about what to collect for forensic examination and how to collect it. In turn, evidence will be analyzed quicker with findings sent back to the crime scene.

"You basically have a real-time communications channel between the person at the crime scene and the laboratory," describes Albert Harper, executive director of the institute.

Like most technologies, Harper notes teleforensics has both higher cost options and lower cost options.

"We're trying to bridge the gap between the super deluxe, high-end stuff that's available and what a small to medium agency could realistically have," says Harper, who has a doctorate in human biology.

The institute has explored a number of options. The simplest and lowest cost option is a camera cell phone at about $100. "At the crime scene, you collect the picture and you can send it any place in the world and it's in the lab in a few minutes," he says. "Of course when you do something like this, you've got issues in terms of security and fidelity of the image. It's a teleforensics solution, but it really doesn't work very well."

An option that works fairly well in terms of image quality is using a good digital camera to take photographs and sending them via a laptop and wireless cellular modem, he says. Images can be transmitted at a reasonable speed, and connectivity also is fairly good, he says. Cost for this option can be as little as $1,000.

A step up from that in quality and price (in the $10,000 to $20,000 range and dropping) is a satellite videophone system. Here the image quality and speed transmission is quite good, almost good enough to have motion, Harper says, noting this would be like the images of reporters in Iraq. You can see them standing there, but once in awhile their image jerks a bit as the bandwidth decreases. Mobility of the system is also quite excellent, he says, because you can go just about anywhere and the satellite antenna can have a view of the sky.

Next are landline-based video conferencing systems. Image quality is excellent, fidelity of the image is superb, but you can't take the systems anywhere, he says. "You have either a stationary system or a huge mobile system, such as a mobile TV station," he says. "The cost of these kinds of systems is getting to be very high. Mobile TV stations offer incredible mobility but the cost is out of reach for a small department at $500,000 and up."

Beyond that, the technology is military- and NASA-based. NASA is capable of sending images hundreds of millions of miles through space, and quite literally, Harper says the sky is the limit with teleforensic technology.

The most feasible solution today involves the Internet and a wireless modem as part of the transmission system, Harper says. It is the most feasible because the Internet is so widely available, he says. Security also can be set up to make the transmissions secure, he adds, noting security is always crucial. And he says you can get bandwidths good enough to receive images with motion.

In the long run, as the price of satellite technology goes down, he anticipates teleforensics will involve satellite video systems. "The quality of the image and the fact that you can have a live image really impresses me so that's where I hope we're going with our work," he says.

Putting together different telecommunications technologies to transmit an image from the crime scene to someone who can analyze the image is one half of the institute's teleforensics project. The second half involves how the data collected at the crime scene can be analyzed efficiently and, if possible, in real time to give investigators critical information as soon as possible.

One way to speed up analysis is to use portable instrumentation at the scene. The consortium is working on portable technology capable of identifying minute quantities of different atoms, Harper says. "You might be able to use a system like this to go into a crime scene and scan the room for areas where you have gunshot residue or microscopic amounts of blood or anything that has high elemental weight," Harper says. "After scanning, the investigator at the scene can look at a computer display and determine whether or not the sample being questioned should be collected for further analysis."

Another way to speed up analysis is to send images of the evidence to the laboratory where the image can be searched against a database, maybe a fingerprint search using an AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems) or a shell casing search using NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network). Using the appropriate protocols, you could even access national databases directly from the crime scene, he says.

"We have these huge databases; by taking information at the scene and transmitting it to the database remotely, we speed up the process of finding out whose fingerprint this is, for example, or what gun a case came from or ultimately whose DNA this is," Harper says. "And that's the real goal: to shorten that period from data observation to data analysis. If we can make it in real time so the investigators at the scene can have that information now, they can act much quicker and hopefully solve more crimes."

Ultimately, he predicts in the next 10 years or so, DNA will be done at the crime scene and transmitted to databases for comparison.

Harper is optimistic and says teleforensics could be in use by agencies in a couple of years.

As technology advances, the people using the technology should not be forgotten. The importance of collaboration with all users of the system should not be overlooked, Harper advises. To set up a system and have it used only at the crime scene or only at the laboratory or only at a command post would render the system useless. Information needs to be shared and for sharing to take place, everyone needs to work together. Law enforcement has a lot to gain by doing this.

Czerwinsky concludes, "I think this is something that most agencies would have an extreme interest in. If this is developed fully and we can prove it will work, it will almost become an industry standard."

Rebecca Kanable is a freelance writer living in Wisconsin. A former associate editor with "Law Enforcement Technology," she has been writing about law enforcement technology for seven years. She can be reached at kanable@charter.net.
 

*December 2002 per BPA statement
*Harvey Research Organization readership survey