In almost every hit TV show involving the criminal system and forensics, we’ve seen law enforcement officials analyzing the data and recorded conversations affiliated with crime-related cases. Whether it’s a killing or the mysterious disappearance of an individual, these recorded calls are crucial evidential components to solving a crime.
For years, PSAPs (or the public safety answer points) have been handing over 911 call recordings to investigators for them to extensively review call content and the date and time in which the calls occurred. A time-consuming process, the manual analysis of this data can often inhibit investigators from rapidly achieving an overall view of what occurred and proactively spotting trends in emergency communications.
Therefore, PSAPs are now enlisting in the support of speech analytics software to help in investigations, surface emerging trends, and even amplify PSAPs’ effectiveness and response times through the identification of development opportunities. With the ability to index the context and meaning of every phrase and word in a call, speech analytics solutions have proven to successfully dig deeper into 911 interactions in ongoing investigations and provide law enforcement officers a “bigger picture” on the incidents occurring in a community.
According to an article in Law and Order magazine, speech analytics are increasingly being used to leverage 911 calls to “piece together” a flow of events and thus add more depth to an investigation and detect emerging trends. As described in the article, if calls are revealing an increase in simple gang activity, like vandalism, speech analytics software can reveal that trend without a PSAP user’s direction. Instead, speech analytics showcases the category of calls that display the biggest increase or drop in occurrence over a certain period of time. Often serving as a precursor to occurrences, speech analytics allows public safety agencies to be better equipped and even take a course of action to prevent future incidents.
While speech analytics can serve as a tool for investigation matters, they also grant PSAPs the ability to pinpoint trends before they become widespread issues. For example, if a string of activities were occurring in a specified area, a thorough analysis of 911 call recordings could help law enforcement officials backtrack and find underlying links among the incidents. In addition, the thorough analysis processes provided by speech analytics can help improve call handling, and thus lead to best-practice training for dispatchers.
So, next time you’re sitting in front of the TV watching the news (or your favorite crime-cracking TV show), it’s most certain speech analytics will be sharing the spotlight.
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Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell