No, all collaboration with the lab is completely free of charge.
No. We annotate in the cloud and retain CJIS compliance for interacting with the secure footage. The CSI Lab has an evidence.com portal. Data is shared via the “agency partner” feature within the cloud management evidence system. If your agency does not use Axon, we would discuss an alternative to retain full security and confidentiality around the footage. The lab is a secure research site and all research assistants receive a background check and complete confidentiality agreements.
All data is confidential, and what we annotate from the footage does not contain personally identifiable information. For officer identification, we create a de-identified ID. If anyone were to obtain our dataset, it predominately contains 0/1s and time points of when events occur. As we are not collecting nor disclosing personally identifiable information in our data collection, the agency is not required to disclose the lab is analyzing the footage. We do not disclose which agencies we work with, and leave that only up to each individual’s discretion.
The MOU/DUA does not allow us to identify the agency where the data originates. As we are working with several agencies, this provides an additional layer of protection.
We do not focus on what we believe occurs; rather, the coding is on objective events. They either occurred or did not within the video. If we are unable to determine if an event occurred because of camera angle or bad sound, it is not coded. We annotate for every person in the incident, of which we have a video record. This allows us to document what transpired, accounting for all parties.
We accept there are events that are not captured, and therefore accept that what we report is our objective assessment of what transpired during the interaction for which we have a video record. Though not direct observations, we can use the calls for service log to cross-reference the video. If an agency wants to check for compliance activations, we can automate that mapping process.
We are happy to work with agencies on research that involves also analyzes the officer’s reports to capture these observations, but ultimately, that stems from what the agency wants to learn. As this is a collaboration, we work with each agency to determine the process that will work best.
We do not currently accept video from community members, though we are developing a solution allowing us to annotate footage from a community members perspective. If the question is asking about actions taken by the community member, we annotate events for all participants. If there are two officers, one suspect, and three bystanders, we are annotating what each person is doing in the video.
We annotate for key environmental factors that are contextually relevant. In total, we annotate for over 200 events, which capture if the event occurred, where in the interaction did the event occur, and what if any changes are observed. If an agency wants to look at specific environmental factors, we will be happy to include them!
If the agency agrees to provide this information, we map it to the incident. The most common request from agencies is to identify differences between officer-initiated and those initiated from dispatch. Every dispatch system is different, so the specific variables that this data can provide varies by agency. However, any dispatch/call nature information can be incorporated into the study per agency request.
The research is ongoing, and we do not intend to stop processing footage. Currently, we have over 50,000 hours of footage processed. Each department is enrolled until they decide to end the partnership, and each agency can extend this partnership with additional topics they want to learn more about. The length of the study depends on the topic, and work with agencies on timelines collaboratively.
This depends on what the agency wants to learn from the footage. Before we begin development on the project, we have an onboarding call to discuss timelines and the research process.
We welcome people to reach out on our ‘Contact Us’ page and fill out the form. Staff from the lab will reach out and will be happy to coordinate more!