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The Winslow PD began using Axon Community Request and Communities in June of 2018 and experienced almost immediate benefits. With Axon Citizen, the Winslow PD has been able to turn a cumbersome, days-long evidence gathering and submission process into a more convenient, streamlined, hours-long process that has saved the department valuable time and resources.
Axon Community Request – allows officers to send out individual invites to witnesses directly from Axon Capture or Evidence.com.
Axon Community Request+ – create public evidence submission portals that allow agencies to collect evidence from the public during both large-scale and smaller, day-to-day events. And citizens aren’t required to download any additional apps or go through any registration.
Challenge
Collecting photo and video evidence from citizens and organizations frequently turns into a days-long process that limits officers’ field time.
Implementation and early use
“It’s a great product. It’s very simple to use and I’ve even had some of our more technically challenged folks use it.” – Doug Walton, Crime Scene/Evidence Tech
Two opportunities to leverage Axon Citizen occurred shortly after Winslow PD adopted the service: a large fire in a mobile home park; and an officer-involved shooting.
• Mobile Home Park Fire: Winslow PD used Axon Citizen to create a public portal and share the link on their public Facebook page, which netted six citizen video submissions that answered several lingering questions about the incident. Without the use of the public portal, Winslow PD might have never received any videos.
• Officer-involved Shooting: For the officer involved shooting, a citizen captured the event on their iPhone. And rather than having to take custody of the citizens phone for a few days, the officer used the Axon Capture app to have the citizen share the video with him immediately.
“We’d have to take that person’s phone and then do the download. It would have been a couple of days before we got that video.” – Doug Walton, Crime Scene/Evidence Tech
Results
“It’s saved us hours. Days... It goes right into Evidence.com and we’re done.”
– Doug Walton, Crime Scene/Evidence Tech
The Winslow PD has already experienced significant time savings using Axon Citizen when it comes to evidence collection and submission. Collection and organization is much easier and more convenient than before, and has made for better, more expedient officer and citizen experiences.
“Officers that have used it really like because they can send a link to the person and they’re done and on their way.” – Doug Walton, Crime Scene/Evidence Tech
What's to come
The majority of evidence submissions come from the area’s major retailers and are associated with instances of shoplifting. Collecting the surveillance evidence requires an officer to arrive at the scene, wait for the evidence to be downloaded and burned onto a disc or flash drive, and then manually submitted into evidence. Winslow PD plans to have regular visits and training sessions with these retailers to get them to use Axon Citizen email submission links, which they believe will result in even more time and resources saved for the department.