Reducing transcription time by 65-75% at Rowlett PD

Background

When Lieutenant Steve Ferrie took over the Criminal Investigations Division at Rowlett Police Department in Texas, he wanted to find ways to improve processes and reduce administrative burdens from his team. One thing he noticed was that investigators were spending too much time transcribing interviews when they could be spending more time working critical aspects of a case.

“Investigators would complete an interview with a victim, then spend probably three, four hours transcribing,” said Lt. Ferrie.

Finding a solution for transcribing became a top priority — it’s taking up too much time for the investigators.

Auto-transcripts equal speed

Enter Axon Auto-Transcribe, which takes footage from the interview or audio/video within Axon Evidence and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate text transcripts. After discussing their existing transcription workflow issues with an Axon customer success manager, Rowlett Police Department joined the Auto-Transcribe Early Access program to try the product — and the results were immediately apparent. “It takes less than 30 minutes to train an investigator on how to use the editing tools,” noted Lt. Ferrie.

Our investigators can listen to the evidence and make changes in a fraction of the time.

Onboarding made simple

Axon Auto-Transcribe is part of Axon Evidence, allowing users to login once and eliminate the need to use multiple systems. The auto-transcript can be ordered from any video or audio file in Axon Evidence. Plus, learning to use the Transcription Assistant editing tool is simple since it has a familiar and intuitive user interface to make any corrections needed to the transcript. “It takes less than 30 minutes to train an investigator on how to use the editing tools,” noted Lt. Ferrie.

Looking to the future

Using Axon Auto-Transcribe has given the Criminal Investigations Division at Rowlett PD more time to focus on its cases by simplifying what was once a time-consuming administrative task.

As Rowlett PD expands the use of Axon Auto-Transcribe across the department, they have started testing the Review Assistant functionality to support compliance reviews of BWC footage. By having an AI-generated transcript that is synced to the video, reviewers will be able to scan transcripts quickly and locate the critical moments of the video evidence as they review for compliance. It’s all part of Rowlett PD’s embrace of new technologies that will allow their investigators to focus their energy and time on the details of the case, not painstaking transcription.

For more information on Axon Auto-Transcribe visit: axon.com/auto-transcribe

Just push the button and then come back, the transcript is done, that’s very simple — Lt. Ferrie