Public Safety & Mission Software
Digital Evidence & Records Workflows
Integrating body-worn camera, evidence, and records systems with courts and prosecutors.
What this covers
Video, photos, and documents from body-worn cameras, in-car systems, and evidence platforms have to be linked to cases, shared with prosecutors, redacted for release, and retained under strict rules. HQT builds the workflow and integration software that connects these systems.
Typical activities
- Case and evidence linkage between camera platforms, evidence management, and RMS
- Automated sharing with prosecutors and courts through secure interfaces
- Redaction workflow support for public records and discovery
- Retention alignment across systems with different schedules
- Audit trail consolidation for chain of custody
- Storage and cost management for large video volumes
What you receive
Documented integrations, workflow automation, retention configuration, and audit reporting.
Why it matters
Manual handling of digital evidence is slow and error-prone, and errors have consequences in court. Integration reduces both the workload and the risk.
Signs the current evidence workflow is breaking down
Agencies usually look at this work after a specific incident rather than on a schedule. Conditions worth acting on:
- Prosecutors receive evidence on physical media, or through share links that expire and are reissued by hand.
- Someone maintains a spreadsheet mapping evidence identifiers to case numbers because the systems do not exchange that identifier.
- The redaction queue has no owner and no age report, so nobody can say which pending request is oldest.
- Retention runs on a calendar reminder held by one records supervisor, and legal holds are tracked in email threads.
- Recorded video sits in a default or unassigned category, so it never becomes eligible for disposition.
- A discovery dispute or audit required staff to reconstruct by hand who viewed, downloaded, or shared a file.
Each is workable on its own. When several occur together, staff time and individual memory are holding the workflow together.
Design decisions to settle first
This work sits between products an agency already licenses. The camera vendor's evidence platform is usually the system of record for media, the records management system for the case, the prosecutor's office runs its own case management, and the court its own filing intake. Decide early which system holds the authoritative copy and which identifier the others carry, since that determines whether later retrieval is a query or a manual search.
A duplicate copy creates a second storage cost and a second retention and disclosure obligation on the same footage, so prefer references, manifests, and verified transfers. Where a package does have to move, define what it contains: the media, the metadata, the hash values recorded at ingest, and a manifest the receiving office can check against what arrived.
A sharing feature that requires prosecution or defense staff to hold accounts in your tenant is a stopgap rather than an interface: account administration and expiring links then sit in the path of every case. For exchanges bound for a court or prosecutor's system, ask whether the receiver accepts a published exchange standard such as the National Information Exchange Model before commissioning a custom format.
What to require in a solicitation or contract
Language settled at procurement is easier than renegotiating later. Consider requiring:
- Documented API access to media, metadata, and audit records in the base license rather than a priced add-on, with supported operations and rate limits in writing.
- The right to export all media, metadata, audit logs, redaction records, and retention categories in non-proprietary formats, during the term and at termination, at no charge.
- No per-share, per-download, or per-external-user fee for prosecutors, defense counsel, or courts.
- Retention category and legal hold set and released through the interface, with a verifiable record that deletion occurred.
- Item-level audit events for view, download, share, and modification, exportable on an agreed schedule.
- Non-destructive redaction that preserves originals, tracks derivatives separately, and records hash values at ingest.
- Storage tiering and any retrieval or egress charges for archived video priced in the schedule.
- A security addendum covering the FBI CJIS Security Policy where the data includes criminal justice information, vendor personnel screening, and any cloud authorization program your state requires.
- Accessibility conformance for any public-facing records request or release portal.
Tie acceptance to one end-to-end transfer completed with the prosecutor's office on a real case rather than a demonstration on vendor data.
Checking whether it worked
Take a baseline before anything changes, then measure the same items afterward: elapsed time from a prosecutor's request to a delivered package, the share of evidence items carrying a case identifier, the age of the oldest item in the redaction queue, items still in an unassigned retention category, and failed or retried transfers.
Two checks are worth running by hand. Pick a closed case at random and try to produce a complete chain of custody report from one system without vendor help. Then run a scheduled disposition and confirm in writing that records past retention were removed and that anything under hold was preserved. Ask the prosecutor's office whether intake actually changed.
Working with HQT on this
HQT scopes this kind of work as a fixed-price or time-and-materials engagement with a written statement of work, named staff, and a defined acceptance process. We are candid about what we can take on and prefer a well-run project to an oversized one. Contact us to discuss a requirement, a draft scope, or an upcoming solicitation.
Frequently asked questions
How do we share body-worn camera video with the district attorney without burning discs or mailing drives?
The option that holds up at volume is an interface between your evidence platform and the prosecutor's case management system that transfers a defined case package with its metadata and integrity hash values. Portal invitations can work at low volume, but they place account administration and expiring links in the path of every case. Two questions decide the design: which system holds the authoritative copy, and how the receiving office records that it received everything.
Does integrating body-worn camera, evidence, and records systems have to meet CJIS requirements?
Body-worn camera video is not automatically criminal justice information, so the first step is determining which recordings and which linked record data fall under the policy. Where the data does include criminal justice information, the FBI CJIS Security Policy applies to the systems that store it, the transfers between them, and the vendor personnel with access. Your state's CJIS Systems Agency administers compliance and can confirm how the current policy is applied there. Treat encryption in transit and at rest, strong authentication, personnel screening, and record-level audit logging as design inputs rather than items added before acceptance.
Who is responsible for redacting body-worn camera video before a public records release?
The agency holding the record is responsible for applying its state disclosure law and any exemptions, and vendor tooling only carries out a decision a reviewer has already made. Many states have statutes or guidance written specifically for body-worn camera footage, so check your own statute and any attorney general or state archives guidance. Build the workflow so that legal review, redaction work, and release are separate logged steps and the original recording is preserved unaltered.
How long do we have to retain body-worn camera footage?
Retention is set by your state records retention schedule and any local policy adopted under it, and some states also set minimum retention periods for body-worn camera recordings by statute. Periods normally vary by category, with recordings tied to a case or an incident held far longer than routine recordings never linked to anything. The common failure is footage that is never categorized and so never becomes eligible for disposition. Retention also yields to litigation holds and to pending public records requests.
Can we integrate if our camera vendor, records vendor, and the prosecutor all use different systems?
Usually yes, though the effort depends on the interfaces each product exposes and on what your current licenses permit. Start with an interface inventory covering documented APIs, export formats, identifier schemes, and the contract terms governing data access. Where a product exposes no usable interface, the realistic options are scheduled exports or a contract amendment, which is why API access is worth negotiating at renewal rather than after.