Categories and retention policies
The Categories feature provides the ability to create policies, maintain them, and assign them to evidence. Categories include policy settings for evidence retention and restricted access for especially sensitive evidence.
Administrators or other users who are allowed the Category Administration permission can configure and delete categories.
Special and Pre-Configured Categories
Evidence.com currently includes one special category:
- Uncategorized: Any evidence that is not assigned to another category is automatically assigned to the Uncategorized category. When you assign a category to evidence, it is automatically removed from the Uncategorized category. You cannot delete the Uncategorized category.
When your agency was created, we provided four additional categories that you can edit or delete as needed:
- Officer Injury
- Traffic Stop
- Training Demo
- Use of Force
Evidence Retention Policy
The evidence retention policy determines:
- Whether Evidence.com initiates automatic deletion of evidence assigned to the category.
- How long Evidence.com waits before initiating the deletion of evidence that is not included in a case. All evidence deletion dates, except for evidence submitted via Community Request, are calculated based on the recorded on date. Community Request evidence deletion dates are calculated based on the uploaded on date.
To protect against accidental deletions, administrators can recover files up to 7 days after they are queued for deletion.
This policy applies to evidence only. Cases are never deleted automatically.
Evidence included in a case is exempt from deletion until it is removed from the case.
If evidence is in multiple categories, the longest retention time is used.
Evidence.com sends the following notification emails about evidence queued for deletion:
- Administrators receive a weekly email that summarizes upcoming agency-wide deletions.
- Users receive a weekly message regarding evidence that they uploaded.
For administrators, the Dashboard includes an Upcoming Evidence Deletions section that lists both user-initiated and system-initiated deletions.
The case retention period is linked to the evidence category. If an evidence file is uncategorized and a new categorized evidence file is added, the uncategorized file is overwritten to match. For example, if a categorized evidence file with a retention policy of 30 days is added to the case, all uncategorized files in that case are changed to match the 30-day retention policy as well.
Restricted and Confidential Categories
The Categories feature provides the ability to apply the Restricted or Confidential access class to evidence that is especially sensitive. In order to view evidence assigned to a Restricted or Confidential access class, users must be on the evidence access list or assigned a role that has the appropriate permission.
If a user does not have permission to apply the Restricted or Confidential access class, then the user will not be able to assign evidence to a category that applies the access class change in Axon Evidence. Users applying categories using Axon mobile or desktop apps are not restricted from assigning categories.
By default, all new and pre-configured categories are not restricted or confidential categories.
