Posts by Scott Neville

We were delighted when West Midlands Police announced, as part of a new technology roll-out that they estimate to be saving the force 550,000 officer hours a year.

One of the new practices bringing benefits is a process they’re calling “Click & Collect a Crook” which is one of the things that has been made possible by the introduction of hand held devices running Bluestar’s Corvus.

Bluestar’s Corvus product as well as a comprehensive information and intelligence provision now delivers  the same and in some cases improved access to a range of systems only previously available on computer terminals in police stations, to around 4,000 frontline officers who are now equipped with the hand held devices.

West Midlands Police’s latest statistics show they are carrying out more than 10,000 checks a day using a new app that links to the ‘Corvus’ tasking and briefing system.
It means officers can access the latest intelligence on individuals, vehicles and addresses, plus get information on crime patterns in particular areas, while on the move and not be tied to a desk.

A police spokesman said “I would estimate the rollout of this new technology is saving each officer at least an hour a day − and that equates to about 550,000 police officer hours a year.
“That’s time they can now spend on patrols, making enquiries and searching for crime suspects.”

Read the full article on the West Midlands Police site.

Bluestar is pleased to announce the latest release of the Corvus mobile platform. The revisions include a range of new features and improved compatibility for older versions of operating systems. Of course, support for the latest Android, iOS and Windows devices is still provided as standard.

Improvements include the simplification of intelligence submissions, extended ‘One Search’ coverage and enhanced audible notifications. In addition, the mapping interface incorporates a range of new data items and increased visibility of source data and trends. Linked to geo-zone alerting, predictive models, briefing and tasking, the system provides a comprehensive solution for strategic and tactical direction of operational resource.

The Corvus mobile platform offers substantial time savings including the completion of forms and access to critical information. More importantly, Corvus applications are designed to maximise the value of the device and ensure that this is being exploited to the full compared to a simple conversion of an existing desktop application. You can trust Corvus to support officers in dealing effectively with challenging situations.

As you would expect from Bluestar the system is secured out of the box with only the need to deploy the application to mobile devices.

Enabled Modules

A whole host of modules are now mobile enabled including:

• Single Enterprise View
• Briefing
• Tasking
• Neighbourhood Profiles
• iPlans
• Stop & Search
• Intelligence Submissions

Bluestar are pleased to launch a new project to upgrade the look and feel of Visual Corvus. Visual Corvus has for many years provided officers with a simple yet powerful way of mapping relationships between nominals, locations, vehicles and the events they are associated with. The product is now due an upgrade taking advantage of the latest technology. This will enhance the user experience making the interface clearer helping them to understand the relationships that exist between objects. The upgrade will also include more data and links so that no relationship is missed.

Visual Corvus sits on top of the extensive Corvus data warehouse and draws on the power of this data to support your investigation, suggesting links and leads with no effort from the end user. Visual Corvus puts the power of your organisations data at your fingertips and the upgrade project will make this more accessible than ever.

More Information?

You can get more information on Visual Corvus or all of our products, by requesting one of our product guides or a demo. Please contact us.

As well as the regular user group meeting, there are a number of guest speakers arranged for the event. The topics covered will include Digital Asset and Evidence Management, Operational Mobile Policing and Intelligent Call Response. In addition there will be a number of interactive demonstrations and workshops taking place. As well as offering the chance to discuss Bluestar, our products and performance, the event therefore also provides an opportunity to benefit from the presentation of best practice given by your colleagues.

Conference & User Group Agenda

• 09.30 – 10:00 Arrival & Registration
• 10:00 – 10:05 Welcome & opening words
• 10:05 – 11:00 What do we already know? – Ensuring seamless knowledge transfer throughout (Simon Furnivall – Merseyside Police)
• 11:00 – 11:15 Coffee / tea break
• 11:15 – 11:45 Breakout / demonstration sessions – Corvus mobile / TreadMatch
• 11:45 – 12:30 Digital Asset Management – The challenges and solutions for securely managing and delivering the growing volumes of digital evidence (Daniel Sharpe – Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Scientific Support)
• 12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
• 13:30 – 14:00 Maximising the value of mobile devices – The guidance and policy developed by West Midlands Police
• 14:00 – 15:30 Parallel Sessions
  • Stream 1 – Corvus User Group
  • Stream 2 – Non User Group Stream (Introduction, IOM / Briefing & NHP, supporting predictive policing)
• 15:30 – 15:45 Coffee / tea break
• 15:45 – 16:15 Bluestar road map – The way forward and information about some of the areas we have in development
• 16:15 – 16:30 Q&A / Closing Remarks
• 16:30 A chance for further discussion and demonstration of any of the Corvus modules at your discretion

We are delighted to confirm the date and venue for our annual conference. This will take place on the 20th September at the De Vere Heythrop Park, OX7 5UE.

As usual, there are a number of guest speakers attending and Bluestar will be showcasing our latest developments.

Corvus Conference & User Group 2017 see details

If you would like to receive an invitation, please register your interest by Contacting Us

We are very pleased to announce that our second year at the Police strategy Forum 2017 held at Heythrop Park on 20 & 21 June 2017 was a great success.

Bluestars’ technical and user requirement experts had chance to demonstrate, give advice and answer questions about Bluestars full range of Police related products.

Our guest speaker at the event was from the Metropolitan Police Service Total Policing Capability. The Dective Inspector spoke about the MPS Tread Finder Project using in-custody footwear scanners and along with our advanced automated pattern matching application is allowing real time intelligence package generation where footwear mark types are identified as matched to crime scenes.

Vulnerability in the modern world is complex and stems from a range of issues such as domestic abuse and mental health concerns. Ensuring that victims and those at risk are correctly assessed places a very significant administrative burden on Police Forces and supporting agencies. Legislation requirements unfortunately means that more time can be spent on completing forms and paperwork rather than dealing with the actual situation and concerns.

VPRF uses the Corvus knowledge base to automatically extract details for the persons involved and their relationship group and taps into any previously completed forms to reduce the effort to a minimum. The application automatically calculates risk and marks the record accordingly. VPRF can be integrated with other Corvus applications and / or source systems for a fully ‘joined-up’ solution.

VPRF

Deals with over 20 different vulnerability streams including DA, CSE, Mental Health concerns, Hate Crime etc.

Wide ranging data capture linked to customisable set of questions per stream, per incident, per role

Automated document production

Readers may be aware of the recent developments linked to the automatic scanning of footwear during the custody process for the Metropolitan Police Service. This was the subject of a recent Crimewatch piece discussing the value of the intelligence gained and the cost savings from the removal of the existing paper based approach.

After a thorough review by the Home Office and Forensice Sciences Regulator, Bluestar can announce the live implementation of the product commences this month. Tread Finder allows scans to be taken and automatically matched against the National Footwear Reference Collection (NFRC) within a matter of seconds. Investigators can then receive immediate intelligence based upon the value of this association. Furthermore, the same features are embedded within the National Footwear Database (NFD) so the entire forensic community can benefit.

What is Tread Finder

Tread Finder is a client application developed by Bluestar which extends the functionality of the NFRC/NFD by providing integration with a physical scanner for gathering footwear impressions during the detention process. The application picks up any custody records automatically sent to the NFD which do not contain scans and presents these on a queue linked to the custody suite.

Detention officers then complete a simple process and submit the patterns to the NFD. These are automatically compared to the national collection (NFRC) to establish the type of pattern the footwear should be linked to. Once the pattern type is known, an intelligence pack is generated to offer an immediate view for the investigator.