The City of Southaven is investing nearly $92,000 in new technology products for its police force. 

Earlier this month the North Mississippi suburb’s Board of Aldermen approved a little more than $39,000 for a three-year license from BriefCam, a video content analytics software that Southaven Police Department officials said will help more efficiently search video footage during investigations. 

Despite its name, BriefCam is not a camera, nor is it attached to existing cameras, according to Southaven PD Deputy Chief Brent Vickers. Rather, Vickers explained, it’s a standalone appliance housed in SPD’s intelligence and analyst unit at the department’s headquarters. 

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BriefCam works by searching footage transferred to the device for specific objects and characteristics, such as “red T-shirt” or “four-door sedan,” for example. Algorithms “condense that video down and strip away all the noise” to identify objects that match the description investigators are hoping to identify, Vickers said. 

Southaven PD obtains footage through subpoenas or when it’s consensually given in the course of an investigation, Vickers said.

“Our hopes are (BriefCam) will be a game-changer for us as far as our time and efficiency when it comes to investigations,” Vickers said. In a demonstration, he explained, BriefCam was able to identify a specific vehicle “in a matter of seconds” while it took the department “over half a day” to find it by going through footage without BriefCam’s assistance. 

Vickers emphasized the tool will be used post-event for investigative purposes only. “This is not a surveillance tool, per se. It’s not doing active surveillance. It’s simply helping us to investigate situations quicker and more efficiently.” 

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BriefCam also offers facial recognition capabilities, though Southaven PD did not opt for that feature, Vickers said. 

“We’re just not ready to go that route until we’re certain that the guidelines in the courts and everything are okay with us using that,” explained Vickers, who also cited privacy concerns. 

When asked if BriefCam allows searches based on skin color and tone, Vickers said, “Looking through all of our documents on BriefCam, there is nothing that mentions skin tone.” Regarding how BriefCam finds people, Vickers said it is based on “person attributes” which include “lower and upper wear by color, hats, face masks and bags.”

He added, “From what we have seen, skin tone would not be as beneficial to us anyway as the quality of a lot of the video we get can show clothing colors and style, but not necessarily skin tone.”

The department employs two full-time officers who assist the investigative services unit by gathering intelligence, identifying people and putting out BOLO (Be on the Lookout) alerts. These officers will be trained to use BriefCam. 

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Additional investments

The department will soon have use of a DJI Drone manufactured and distributed by Axon Enterprise, the same manufacturer of SPD’s body cameras. Unlike the drones currently used by the department, the DJI Drone is capable of recording video. 

“The problem with the drones we have now is they have very limited capabilities as far as they don’t have an ability to record anything,” said Vickers, who said recording capabilities could assist in aerial searches. 

The drone footage will be monitored, stored and viewed through evidence.com, which the department uses to store its body camera footage. According to city documents, the drone and related services cost approximately $45,600. 

City officials also recently approved purchasing approximately $7,000 in Signal Units, which cause Axon-branded body cameras used by SPD officers to automatically turn on when their police vehicle light bar is activated. 

The department already uses Signal Units, according to Vickers, in addition to in-car cameras in some police vehicles. Citing costs and changes in the department’s fleet each year, Vickers said not every SPD vehicle has an in-car camera, with around 25 in-car cameras being used right now. 

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“We want to make sure that every car that has an officer that wears a body camera has a … Signal Unit in it. ... That helps us make sure that we gather as much as we need to of any type of incident that would require an officer to activate their body camera,” Vickers said.

“What it comes down to is just leveraging that technology as a force multiplier to help us have more eyes and ears out in the community to operate.”