Marion County Prosecutor's Office Body Worn Camera Unit

Indianapolis is the largest city in Indiana, as well as its capital and the seat of Marion County. Marion County is the 51st most populated county in the country with over 968,000 residents living within 396 square miles.

Adoption and use of body-worn cameras (BWC) by local police created an expectation of rapid video availability for investigation, prosecution, and public dissemination. BWC video captures personal information that must be redacted prior to use to protect victims, witnesses, and bystanders from privacy violations.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) began implementation of its BWC protocol in August 2020, when it deployed cameras to approximately 1,100 officers. BWCs are automatically activated in most situations including when responding to dispatched calls, when lights and/or sirens are used, during arrest or seizure, pursuits, searches, investigations and questioning of victims, suspects, or witnesses, amongst others. From August to December 2020, members of the IMPD created 224,655 unique recordings, resulting in the storage of 51.11 terabytes of data.

Once BWC usage was adopted, the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office (MCPO) began fielding requests from prosecutors and the public for access to footage. To address requests, MCPO created the Body Camera Redaction Unit (BCRU) to review BWC footage, identify personal identifying information (PII), redact it, and finalize footage for release. Given the volume of BWC generated , the workload is continually growing, straining human and technological resources.

MCPO is enhancing its BWC unit. An additional paralegal will be added to the BCRU to help with status and process inquiries from prosecutors and the public, address concerns as cases are processed, collect and track data, and handle audio transcription of BWC footage and depositions/taped statements.

Additionally, MCPO will purchase redaction software licenses to accelerate video processing.  The software detects faces, license plates, computer screens and other PII within video evidence, and indexes it for quick and easy review. It can track the defined images throughout the video and blur them, streamlining the redaction process and simplifying data review by automatically searching by keyword, faces and objects. It transcribes and translates audio, which allows speaker-separated audio to be easily reviewed. It is estimated that used together, this software saves several hours per audio/video file hour.