Latest in high tech helps police keep ahead of criminals
Sometimes the police have too little evidence to make a case. Jeffrey Burton usually has too much.
As a digital imaging technician for the Plymouth Sheriff's Department, Burton has to process a constant stream of video evidence from security cameras at banks, automatic teller machines, and retail stores. Buried amid the gray, flickering images are clear-cu t evidence of robberies, burglaries, and assaults -- if Burton can just isolate the important images from hours of irrelevant video.
When Burton began his career eight years ago , ``it would take three to four hours to process a videotape," he said. These days, it often takes minutes, thanks to VideoFOCUS, a powerful video analysis program produced in Boston.
VideoFOCUS was one of the stars of last week's convention of the International Association of Identifications. Parts of the Hynes Convention Center looked like a set from the TV series CSI, as forensic technicians from across the country came to the conference to learn the latest techniques for identifying the living and the dead. Salient Stills Inc., the maker of VideoFOCUS, is one of several local companies whose products have become vital tools in law enforcement.
Salient Stills founder Laura Teodosio, a chemical engineer and graduate of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wasn't interested in law enforcement when she started the company. ``Our very first customer was The New York Times," she said. The Times had found that images captured from television news broadcasts were usually too grainy and blurred to show up well on the printed page. VideoFOCUS removes most of the haze, so the image can be printed. Many other media operations also use VideoFOCUS, including The Boston Globe.
But starting in 2000, Teodosio was inundated by requests for help from police agencies. Thieves seeking the drug OxyContin launched a wave of drug-store robberies. In many cases, the police had video surveillance tapes from the stores. But they didn't have time to scan through them all, especially since many were of poor quality.
Teodosio and her employees used VideoFOCUS to assist the police. The software let them quickly locate incriminating scenes, then sharpen the images so police had clear pictures of their suspects.
``They were hauling the video tapes into our office, and we were just doing our civic duty," she said. She charged nothing for the service, but realized that she could cash in by marketing VideoFOCUS as a law enforcement tool. Today the software is used in Plymouth, and also by the Boston police, the FBI, and US intelligence agencies. For all its power, Teodosio said that even a police officer with a non technical background can easily learn to use the software.
But Salient Stills must fend off tough competition from Avid Technology Inc. of Tewksbury, the world's leading maker of digital video-editing gear for movie and television production. Since 1997, Avid has teamed up with Ocean Systems, a Maryland company that makes an Avid-compatible package of video software for law enforcement use. The Avid-Ocean Systems dTective system offers the same kind of powerful video-enhancement features as VideoFOCUS. Users include the Boston police and the MBTA transit police, as well as police in Miami and Louisville, Ky., and the Michigan State Police.
Also on hand at the show was Aware Inc. of Bedford. Best known as the developer of the chipsets used by DSL broadband modems, Aware is also a major provider of software tools for capturing and storing biometric data, like fingerprints and facial features.
Even though Aware technology is found in millions of DSL modems, most people have never heard of the company. Its contribution to law enforcement is equally subtle. Aware makes software tool kits used by the makers of fingerprint- and facial-recognition gear. The federal government has set rigorous standards for how such data must be stored.
``They were looking for a very efficient way to digitize fingerprints, because they wanted to get rid of paper," said Aware sales manager Mike Taylor. But the government also had to be sure that a fingerprint file created in Augusta, Ga., could be read by a police computer in Washington or Woburn.
Instead of writing their own biometric data-capture software to meet the federal standard, manufacturers buy the Aware tool kits and integrate the necessary software into their products.
There's still plenty of drudgery in an officer's life; even the powerful technologies on display last week can only do so much, unlike the hokum served up by unrealistic movies and cop shows. Teodosio recalled an episode of CSI in which the police used a computer to zoom in on an image of a victim's eye, to see the murderer's face reflected there.
``At that point," said Teodosio, ``I shut off the TV and said, `I'm never watching this show again.' "
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
