How the Axon Ecosystem expedites investigations and helps clear more cases

The challenge

Digital evidence has transformed investigations, improving case closure rates for agencies everywhere, but it’s not without its challenges. For instance, the ever-increasing amount of digital evidence must be stored, managed, investigated and shared with attorneys. According to the 2024 Digital Evidence Trends report, over 40% of agencies still burn digital evidence to DVDs, a costly and time-consuming process that makes it difficult to find the evidence.

The solution

Axon assists agencies by enhancing digital evidence workflows, helping agencies improve their investigations and clear more cases with less stress. Agencies can upload, store, manage, investigate and share all of their digital evidence in one place, taking advantage of purpose-built tools designed for the era of digital evidence.

All your digital evidence in one place

There are a myriad of solutions out there for storing and managing digital evidence, and the typical police agency is using at least 3 different solutions to store all of their digital evidence. One of the most popular storage solutions is burning the data to CD/DVDs, with 46% of agencies storing or sharing digital evidence through a method that is no longer used across most other industries.

Burning all of the evidence onto DVDs so that it can be shared with the prosecutor’s office creates several challenges for police departments. DVDs cost money, they don’t last forever, they can easily be lost or stolen, and they take significant time resources. Jason Dietz, a Detective from Hagerstown, MD explained the problems during a panel discussion about digital evidence:

“In the past, I’d spend a whole day doing discovery. I’d [make] five different discs of every single interview, different thumb drives, all this and all that. And I’d drive down to the prosecutor’s office, drop it off to the secretary, hoping she would give it to the person it’s supposed to go to. A month later, about two weeks before trial, we’d get a phone call in a panic [because they couldn’t find the evidence we had already delivered]. You don’t have the time to keep repeating this work.”

Fortunately, there is a much more efficient and secure method for storing and sharing digital evidence. Several key features make Axon Evidence the ideal location to upload, manage, store, investigate and share ALL your agency’s digital evidence.

Our Unlimited Storage plans for both BWC and third-party evidence mean that you do not have to worry about data limits. You can store everything in one secure place, rather than monitoring your limits on multiple solutions.

One common reason agencies do not load all of their evidence into a single cloud-based location is slow upload speeds. When you have gigabytes or terabytes worth of evidence, that is very understandable. Fortunately, Upload XT allows agencies to upload massive files (1.5 TB) and to upload them up to 10 times faster than before.

Axon Evidence is not just a place to store evidence from Axon devices either. With our Third Party Video solution you can store and view thousands of different proprietary file types. No more searching the web for a CCTV player that may or may not play the file correctly - simply upload your footage to Axon Evidence and you can view and share countless files from one location.

Here’s the best part, our Case Sharing functionality makes it incredibly fast, easy and secure to share digital evidence with prosecutors, defense or neighboring agencies. All evidence in a case can be shared with a few quick clicks - no more driving DVDs across town and no more questions about what evidence has been shared or has not been shared.

Officer Bernie Lawrence of the Garland PD also spoke during the same panel mentioned earlier. He described their workflow after switching to Axon Evidence and Case Sharing:

“As soon as we’re going to file a case with a district attorney’s office, we create a case in Axon Evidence, and we start putting in our evidence and videos. We just share that case with the [DA’s] office, and we’re done with it. You could have hundreds of videos … it saves so much time not having to gather all this evidence from different places. Or if we want to share with another agency, we can share that case with them, and they have access to it really quickly.”

Not only are police agencies recognizing the benefits of this, but many attorney’s offices are getting on board as well. Shane Manwaring, a Colonel for the Unified PD of Greater Salt Lake, said this about case sharing: “We’ve got partners who won’t use anything else. The DA’s office is one of them. They hate it when we show up with a disc now. ‘It should be on Evidence.com!’”

Should you or someone in your agency need to testify about video evidence in court, we’ve got a solution for that as well. Axon Investigate is designed and maintained by forensic video experts who regularly testify in court about video evidence, and it’s a powerful way to present video investigations in court.

Axon’s approach to Digital Evidence Management saves countless headaches and makes logistical hurdles a thing of the past. Furthermore, solutions like Axon Body 4, TASER, Axon Fusus and Community Request seamlessly integrate with Axon Evidence, further leveraging the power of the ecosystem and providing the most detailed picture possible, post-incident.

If your agency wants to prepare for the continued growth of digital evidence, then contact Axon to learn more about Axon Evidence, our Unlimited Storage plans, Upload XT, Third-Party Video Support, Case Sharing capabilities and Axon Investigate. Each of these products and features works together seamlessly, helping your agency to efficiently handle the rising tide of digital evidence.