Evernote for Law Enforcement

[heather 604]

After having a very interesting discussion the other night with a police detective, it got me thinking about all the ways Evernote could be used for Police Work.

Between the two of us, we came up with:

Evernote Hello, for crime-scene interviews. The "Timed-Encounter" association would come in handy when looking for connections between people you might have otherwise overlooked.

Livescribe pens, for in-the-field note taking. Record audio of your interviews while writing your notes, then send both to Evernote for cloud syncing.

Skitch, for digital map markup - Load Google Maps and write on it clearly for assignments or other things.

Plus, Evernote's auto-Geotag when taking all notes from mobile devices will come in handy when trying to match evidence to crime scenes.

Do we have any Policemen among our forum ranks here who wish to comment on the above, or expand upon it?

[Owyn 457]

I am not in law enforcement but I worked for a long time in an environment where I had to keep logs in notebooks with pre-numbered pages.

I had to live by two laws:

1)If it is not written, it did not happen.

2)Once written you can not change it.

I can see the use of the various recording tools.

I wonder how much the recorded information would be considered *reliable* evidence.

[heather 604]

That's why we landed on the livescribe - Each notebook is specially encoded so that what you write matches a particular page in a particular logbook. The notes are then saved as PDF/audio. Not "text", so you can comment on them, but not change them.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'm not in law enforcement, but thought I'd comment on the Livescribe. IMO, this was one of the best gadgets I've ever purchased. Ever. I know some tablet apps do a similar function. But the nifty thing about the Livescribe is that you don't have to worry about data coverage where you are or if it's not booting or it hangs, etc. All those things that go along with most devices/computers, other than battery strength & available storage. I have one of the really old 1 gig pens & it holds a lot. The only time I've had the pen fail me is sometimes, if I toss it in my attache (say if you're moving from one office to another) I've had it shut off on me b/c apparently something hit the power button just right. OTOH, if the pen does fail you, you've always got your hard copy. Or maybe the newer pens are designed differently. I also use the earbuds that come with it with my phone, when I want to record a conversation. (I live in a one party state!) It's not that I use this for legal issues. Instead, it's a great way to be able to recall what was discussed. At least a couple of times, after scheduling something over the phone, I'll ask myself, "Did I remember to mention xxx?" Easy to replay the convo & see if I need to call back & give them additional info or not.

I know in a lot of jurisdictions, patrol cars have audio/video cams they start up when the are doing a stop. AFAIK, that is allowed as evidence in courts. (Or at least I've seen on the judge shows, it's evidence when a policeman sues a civilian for filing a false/malicious report. You can confirm with Leon, as he's probably seen these cases, too. ) Similarly, I'd think a mandatory tool for detectives would be a Livescribe setup. (Although I never thought about it before you posted this.)

[astoriacop 0]

I am in law enforcement. I have been using Evernote for a year or so and am pretty sure I am going to purchase Evernote for the entire department. We are about to move from PC based mobile data terminals to individually issued iPads. I can buy 16 iPads and otterboxes for the price of two ruggedized laptops.

We will use Evernote for information sharing and collaboration not necessarily for note taking or logging. For officers working on large cases or large projects the ability to gather diverse types of documents and files into notebooks are going to get us increased productivity. Additionally if we can use it to manage lists in the GTD tradition we will be a better department.