ORLANDO — Two witnesses report an argument in a parking lot. An officer responds, calls for backup and encounters a man with an axe-like object. Each stage leaves a different record: a 911 call, radio traffic, surveillance video and body camera footage.
For the officer preparing the report, those records need to tell one story.
Tait Communications is working to connect those pieces through an incident-to-evidence ecosystem designed to help officers find relevant information, reconstruct events and organize evidence for prosecution.
“It’s not about the capture of video anymore,” said Adam Crookes, head of strategy and growth for Tait’s video portfolio. “It’s actually how we make sense of what we’re capturing.”
At IACP 2026, Crookes used the fictional parking lot incident to explain how that workflow comes together. Capabilities presented at the conference form part of a future release of Tait’s Altitude Digital Evidence Management System.
The broader approach centers on connecting dispatch, radio, video and third-party evidence sources without requiring agencies to replace every component of their technology environment.
Connecting systems agencies already use
Crookes said agencies often acquire technologies at different times, then discover those systems cannot easily exchange information.
A mobile application used to photograph crime scenes may operate separately from the evidence management platform. Radio recordings may sit in another system, leaving personnel to gather the material and assemble the incident themselves.
Tait’s approach extends its open standards philosophy into digital evidence management, allowing agencies to connect equipment and applications from multiple providers.
“Ultimately, we’re looking to bring in not just our evidence sources, but any third-party evidence source as well,” Crookes said.
Those sources could include body-worn and in-car video, CCTV, radio traffic, drone footage and computer-aided dispatch information.
How it works: Building a case around the incident
In the parking lot scenario, the incident identifier provided the connection between the dispatched response and its associated evidence.
Crookes explained how an incident could be linked to the officers assigned to it, allowing their body-camera recordings and related radio traffic to be associated with the case.
“When the officer arrives to do the report, they’ve already got all that information already sitting there, ready to go,” he said.
Additional evidence could then fill in what happened before officers arrived.
A map could help personnel identify nearby CCTV and request footage covering a specified date and time. After an approval process, an officer could review the footage and determine whether it belonged in the case.
In the fictional incident, surveillance video showed a person walking from the parking lot toward the confrontation.
Making recordings easier to find
Crookes described evidence enrichment tools intended to make recordings searchable beyond their date, time and location.
Transcription adds searchable spoken content. AI-assisted scene summaries provide descriptions of visible activity.
In one clip, a man retrieved an axe-like object from a bag. The scene summary described that action, giving personnel another way to locate the recording through a search.
That capability could help investigators find relevant footage even when they do not know its filename or the incident under which it was collected.
Crookes also described how a license plate captured in video could provide a connection to a recording associated with a separate burglary.
Following the evidence through a timeline
Once the relevant records are gathered, personnel can organize them in an investigation timeline.
For the parking lot incident, that meant following the sequence from surveillance footage and the witnesses’ 911 call through dispatch, the officer’s request for backup and body-camera footage of the encounter.
“As an officer, I can now see, in sequence, all of the relevant evidence as the story unfolds,” Crookes said.
Photographs, sketches and citizen-provided uploads can also contribute to that account.
Officers can mark significant moments as “story points,” then use those points to develop narrative sections within a report. Supporting evidence can be attached to the corresponding section.
A section describing the initial confrontation, for example, could be supported by the relevant surveillance footage, while another describing the officer’s response could draw on radio traffic and body-camera video.
The workflow is intended to reduce the manual work between gathering evidence and preparing an organized account for further review.
Crookes identified two primary users: officers documenting incidents they attended and investigators handling more serious offenses. Both follow a similar process, with investigators examining the material in greater detail as the case becomes more complex.
Keeping officers in control of AI-assisted findings
Crookes emphasized that AI helps surface information while officers remain responsible for evaluating it.
“We’re not saying AI should generate the report,” he said. “We’re just saying, hey, this is what AI saw, what happened.”
A scene summary may help personnel locate an event, but it cannot capture every part of an officer’s experience.
Crookes said customers had raised questions about context that a camera or AI tool might miss, including the officer’s perceptions and what informed a particular response.
Personnel therefore need to confirm findings, correct inaccuracies and add information that is not apparent in the recording.
“The officer’s always in charge,” he said.
Flexible deployment and technology choices
Crookes outlined cloud and on-premises deployment options, including the ability for agencies to use their own hardware infrastructure.
He also described commercial options intended to accommodate different budgets and funding arrangements, including smaller departments that rely on grants.
Crookes described the approach as part of Tait’s vision for the video portfolio over the next 24 months, with interoperability remaining the central priority.
For agencies evaluating the offering, that means considering how existing cameras, radios, dispatch systems and other evidence sources would connect, alongside which capabilities are available for their deployment.
The aim is to make the records of an incident easier to bring together, without requiring every device that captured them to carry the same brand.
Learn more at Tait Communications.
