For Immediate Release - July 16, 2003
Increased Recording Capacity, Faster Delivery of Evidence & Improved Quality of Call Handling
July 16, 2003 - Dictaphone International, the worldwide leader in digital voice recording and voice recognition systems has announced that the Communications Recording Systems group has provided Merseyside Police Freedom Digital Call Recording Systems for their entire Command & Control infrastructure.
Recording all police radio traffic as well as public calls in to the six control centres on a 24/7 basis, the new Dictaphone Freedom systems enables Merseyside Police to provide call recordings for evidential purposes much faster than their old tape based systems as well as dramatically reducing their cost of archiving through increased density of storage.
Lee Jones, Sales Director at Dictaphone commented, ‘Police throughout the UK face an increasing number of challenges to their operations; the instances of litigation against the police is rising and the need for them to provide accurate evidence for prosecutions is matched by a public demand to provide a quality service and value for money.’
Dictaphone Freedom call recording systems, with call recording being made to computer hard discs and stored using networked mass storage devices, has helped Merseyside Police provide fast access to individual recordings.
Chief Inspector Robert Harvey for Merseyside Police commented, ‘A year after initial installation the benefits of the Dictaphone Freedom system are still being revealed. Although requests for recordings have increased fourfold, evidence for court is being provided without delay, with less labour intensity and for the first time, Merseyside Police is being able to ‘dip sample’ the quality of it’s call handling.
As a result, development and training can be provided to staff when it is needed, whilst at the same time positive feedback is also being provided to staff for handling an incident particularly well.’
The Calls & Response Department within Merseyside Police has introduced an Employee of the Month Award for each of its Control Rooms where every month one employee in each of the Control Rooms will receive a small token gift or voucher to the value of ?10 in recognition of their excellent performance. The funding of this award has been provided through sponsorship monies from Dictaphone.
Merseyside Police is currently planning to further upgrade the Freedom system. With the introduction of the new national cellular based and digitally encrypted radio system ‘Airwave’ the force is set to upgrade to the Dictaphone Freedom FT system.
Freedom FT will enable storage capacities to be increased to two years’ live recordings and archiving to tape for a further five years thus allowing a greater number of applications for call recording to be addressed throughout the force.
About Dictaphone Corporation’s Communications Recording Systems (CRS™) Group
A division of Dictaphone Corporation, the Dictaphone Communications Recording Systems (CRS) Group is a leading provider of communications recording and quality monitoring systems for financial services, public safety and contact centres, with over 18,000 installed customers worldwide.
Based on service revenue, Dictaphone is the leading vendor in the call recording industry, according to independent call centre industry analyst Datamonitor. Dictaphone CRS’ principal product is the Freedom network appliance recording system. Dictaphone Corporation, with headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut, USA, has over a century of experience in voice technology.
For more information on Dictaphone Corporation, please visit www.dictaphone.com.
About Freedom™
Freedom FT, is an advanced, fault-tolerant, digital recording system designed to virtually eliminate downtime for crucial communications recording operations in public safety centres and is one of several products built on Dictaphone’s Freedom platform.
Freedom is a network appliance recording system that provides easy access to and storage of voice information with built-in protection against technological obsolescence. Using Freedom, public safety organisations can store voice recordings on any network-attached storage device, and can use a different storage device in the future without making their current recording system obsolete. Additionally, Freedom’s plug-in telecommunications interfaces and operating system-independent architecture mean it can be easily adapted should a customer upgrade its phone system, operating system, or network.
Freedom also provides more ways to access and share voice recordings than conventional recording systems. Its network-ready design and standard audio file format make voice files accessible over any LAN/WAN, Internet or intranet system, using any multi-media PC. In addition, compressed .wav file recordings can be delivered via e-mail, a faster and more cost-effective way to share information than traditional methods of copying and shipping tapes.
Freedom has been a runaway success since its launch in the autumn of 1999. Since the product’s introduction, the company has sold over 8,000 Freedom recorders, which are installed at some 4,000 individual customer locations around the world. Revenues generated from Freedom sales make it the most successful new product in Dictaphone’s history.