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Spotlight: Comb through hours of rich media in minutes with LEMA

Micro Focus media analysis tools save officer time and reduce undesirable viewing, relying on human confirmation

Real time crime center screens

Dalton Webb

Company name: Micro Focus
Headquarters: Santa Clara, California
Signature Product: Law Enforcement Media Analysis (LEMA) Video and image digital forensics – powered by IDOL
Website: www.microfocus.com

1. Where did your company name originate from?

Micro Focus is a British Company that has been in business since 1976. You need more than an IT vendor – you need a partner who has the expertise and commitment to help you achieve success both today and in the long term. Thousands of customers choose Micro Focus because we are: flexible, comprehensive and customer-focused.

2. What was the inspiration behind starting your company?

We built LEMA from the ground up for a major UK Police Force, initially for their counter-terrorism division. The product has been in use for over 10 years, and we have now made the product available to law enforcement agencies around the world. We realized that although huge strides have been made in the fields of face recognition and other AI uses, they were not optimized for law enforcement. Working with our initial customer, we developed a user-friendly application that can process real world images and video, rather than passport style photographs.

3. What is your signature product and how does it work?

LEMA is an application that makes law enforcement officers more productive. LEMA allows officers in the street or adjacent agencies to upload videos or images of people, vehicles, distinguishing features or even objects. These are compared against a watch list of known entities, and using artificial intelligence and deep machine learning capabilities, LEMA will quickly and securely match against the watch list option.

LEMA is already used across the globe in counter-terrorism, narcotics, homicide and general law enforcement investigations. We realize law enforcement is different in each country, jurisdiction and scope. We therefore built LEMA with the controls to allow security, legal retention and cooperation with outside agencies.

4. Why do you believe your products are essential to the law enforcement community?

There is a huge amount of what we call “rich media” in today’s world. Photographs and video may come from police officers, the public, dashcams, bodycams and CCTV, and, after a major event, there will be a huge amount to review. Trying to find the right person, vehicle, tattoo etc. from 50,000 hours of video and 5,000 photographs is time consuming and prone to human error. LEMA makes this happen far faster and has helped law enforcement react faster and free up officer time, as well as reducing the amount of exposure to undesirable viewing, but ALWAYS relying on human confirmation.

5. What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?

Launching LEMA in 50-plus countries has been a challenge!

6. What makes your company unique?

We are part of Micro Focus, a global organization with 11,000-plus employees. Our scale and customer commitment mean we are always available and happy to serve you.

7. What do your customers like best about you and your products?

The way LEMA can efficiently and effectively speed up investigations, assisting law enforcement with catching more undesirables and maintaining evidential integrity to put more in prison while saving departmental and agency time.

8. What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder community?

The most rewarding part of serving first responders and the communities they protect is having an active hand in keeping our communities safe. LEMA is able to quickly and effectively assist law enforcement in solving more crimes, more efficiently. The greatest reward is hearing from customers how LEMA was able to help their agency capture criminals.

9. Do you support any charitable organizations?

Micro Focus helps government and law enforcement agencies worldwide. Micro Focus also has an internal workgroup that is dedicated to former military and first responders, including an internal support system helping those who served and volunteering opportunities for the benefit of active military and first responders around the globe.

10. Is there any fun fact or trivia that you’d like to share with our users about you or your company?

Micro Focus is an extremely diverse company with over 10,000 employees in 48 countries, including 15 officers in the United States. Micro Focus has a dedicated team focused on launching LEMA in North America. Our sales director in North America, Michael Ciesliga, is a former law enforcement officer that served with the Drug Enforcement Administration and was the case agent on numerous complex, transnational drug trafficking and money laundering investigations. During his career in law enforcement, Michael traveled extensively throughout North, Central and South America as well as Europe in furtherance of his investigations.

11. What’s next for your company? Any upcoming new projects or initiatives?

Micro Focus is currently developing the next generation of investigative software that will help law enforcement link investigations using artificial intelligence. Micro Focus plans to release the new software in the next 6 months. Micro Focus will be attending numerous law enforcement conferences to showcase our investigative software in the next few months, including: Cops West (California), Cop Tech (Florida), and IACP Technology Conference (Utah), so come and meet the team.

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