Orlando, Florida put on its best weather this year with many thousands of attendees flocking to the Orange County Convention Center for this year's annual International Association of Chiefs of Police conference. This year marked the 121st running of the annual IACP conference.
Police chiefs from around the world made good use of the educational sessions, technology briefings and previews of the latest technology found on the show's expo floor. The conference was held October 25-28. Several days prior attendies could attend educational offerings that showcased not only how other agencies were utilizing the newest in investigational techniques to solve crimes, but described how rapid gains in technology by industry partners relate to law enforcement technology. In today's worls public safety agencies are engaging the latest technology in the pursuit of both proactive and reactive policing strategies to solve crimes and look at the impact that crimes have on their geographic areas.
This year's conference played host to more than 350 educational sessions and meetings held at the show, in addition to the general sessions, all of which managed high participation numbers. Conference attendees came from as far away as the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Australia, while being backed by a strong national contingent of attendees from the smallest to the largest departments across the United States.
There was no shortage of social networking events this year, either with the annual IACP 's Host Chief's Night held at Universal's Islands of Adventure Theme Park and the annual IACP Foundation Gala/Police Officer of the Year event, held at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. The gala is also the IACP's main fundraising event for providing support to fallen officers families and generating funds for scholarships.
As with many large scale conference, technology plays a huge part in not only organizing and executing the conference, but also plays a large part in the expo side. The expo halls were filled with a veritable smorgasbord of the latest in law enforcement technology advances. The IACP has also embraced the technological aspect of the show, providing a mobile app that provided a customized daily schedule that even provided pop up notifications of events occurring in real time.
Novel ideas and smart data
5.11 showcased their latest adhesive badge "chromaflex" technology as well as their newest uniform apparel and an ever expanding product line of uniform and tactical applications. The United Kingdom's Defense Security Organization showcased a small part of why the their security technology exports now total almost 3 Billion dollars annually. Showcased at their booth were several UK based businesses that featured everything from new-to-market 3D imaging cameras from Aurelia, to mobile wireless relocatable flashpoint cameras that can be installed in a matter of minutes to many existing structures and beam footage back to a central location from UK company SeSys. Also displaying in the UKDSO booth was technology company RepKnight, a software startup in what seems to be a burgeoning industry in social media data mining with law enforcement application, utilizing existing API technology provided by social media platforms allowing law enforcement the ability to triangulate social media coverage of specific events or locations that can be narrowed down and customized by both geographic location and incident type, keywords or hashtags among many other search parameters.
Law enforcement software technology has made a sharp departure from the times of yesteryear where the only technology employed was an MDT unit, to a highly sophisticated market. Social media data mining was at the forefront of many vendors offerings, with many providing a specific targeted platform for just that purpose, or incorporating that as a module into a larger database program that can pull from many different departments within a large agency to assist with both preventative crime statistic tracking and trending, as well as using available data streams such as a social media data mining application to tie in to a larger crime database that is able to collate many different data streams to assist in the solving of crimes.
The bigger push by many vendors at the show was to step away from the 'one size fits all' business practice and instead provide a customized solution that would appeal to both large and small departments. This means providing compartmentalized or 'modular' software options where users can choose only what they can use within the programs to best suit their needs. Companies like Lexis Nexis, New Zealand based company the Wynard Group and Geofeedia were capitalizing on multiple areas of relevant data that can be utilized in many different applications in the law enforcement market. Companies were able to showcase not just the use of current data, but also historical data, to be able to create 'virtual' histories of events to assist in cases such as cold case files.
Cameras
With Ferguson, Missouri fresh in the minds of many police chiefs, body worn cameras seemed to be everywhere. Some vendors had very 'off the shelf' type solutions available, while others pushed the envelope of what works for both the end user street cop and the administrator wanting to have control of camera operation and secure data storage. VieVu displayed its hard-wearing officer solution whic only required a flick of a rubberized front plate to activate the easy to use camera that charged from a standard android plug. A standout product from Utility in the world of body worn cameras seemed to tick all of the boxes that both officers and command staff alike would want in a product. Their product features an accelerometer that would activate based on movement, as well as being wired to activate on several other events, managed by the 'brains' of the operation, a small box in the trunk that not only ran the camera system, but also contained the inner workings of many of the internal public safety features of the patrol car.
Model transport, weaponry and communications
The vehicle sector also comprised a large presense, with almost the entire backside of the expo floor dedicated to all things vehicle, from fleet sales, to lights to armored personnel carriers.
In addition, weapons manufacturers H&K, Sig Sauer and Glock made strong showings. This year Glock released its highly anticipated Glock 42 .380 and presented a $30,000 donation to the DEA Survivors Benefit Fund (DEASBF) as part of their ongoing community efforts. Like the annual SHOT show in Las Vegas, it seemed every other specialty weapon modification company or after market customization company also wanted to showcase its latest modifications or additions to today's police weapons.
Solutions to the age old law enforcement issue of interoperability and communications were on display, too. MutualLink brought its proprietary software and hardware solutions that intends to make the job that has eluded so many departments both local and federal look simple. Their technology enables not just police agencies, but businesses, to link into a network that would allow secured access to both CCTV and radio communications across a data network. While LET visited their booth, MutualLink was able to demonstrate their technology live and show how it allowed access (with granted permissons) to connect to a camera monitoring station in Indianapolis, Indiana from the show floor in Orlando, and demonstrated how the technology can be fed directly into a cellular device for mobile application in the field for both CCTV and voice communications or how the system can utilize any first responders mobile device through the application as a field camera for live viewing of an unfolding situation. For something like the recent Ebola cases or another larger scale pandemic, potentially turning mobile devices into field cameras with close-up viewing of a live incident has wide reaching potential for the law enforcement industry.
While there was more technology at IACP than could be written about in an entire issue of this magazine, one thing is for sure. The world of policing is becoming one that, through technology, will make it infinitely harder for the criminal to succeed. Based on what I saw on this year's expo floor, the future for law enforcement technology continues to improve the way public safety responds to incidents and plan responses, as well as protect officers from harm, both ethically and physically.
