The rise of CCTV cameras has transformed surveillance, offering a wealth of visual data to monitor and investigate crimes. However, with thousands of hours of footage being recorded every day, relying on manual methods to analyse video is no longer feasible. Video analytics, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced algorithms, is reshaping how investigators work with CCTV footage. This technology automates time-intensive tasks, delivers precise insights, and empowers investigators to solve cases faster and more effectively.

Kinesense, as a thought leader in video analytics for law enforcement, is at the forefront of this transformation. Our innovative solutions empower investigators to overcome the traditional challenges of video analysis.

Here are 10 reasons why adopting video analytics is a game-changer for investigations—and why Kinesense is the trusted partner for law enforcement agencies worldwide.

  1. Actionable Intelligence faster

Reviewing hours of footage manually can be slow and delay investigations by days or even weeks. Video analytics streamlines this process by quickly identifying key moments, objects, and events, allowing investigators to rapidly identify and confirm victim, suspect and witness movements.  

  1. Eliminates Human Error

Fatigue, bias, and oversight are common in manual video reviews. Video analytics does not tire, ensuring critical details, such as subtle movements or rare events, aren’t missed. During trials of Kinesense solutions, common feedback from users is they found something they missed when manually reviewing the video.

  1. Reduced Collateral Intrusion 

‘Collateral intrusion’ means the risk of obtaining private information about people who are not subjects of surveillance. By narrowing searches to relevant events using video analytics, collateral intrusion is minimized, ensuring a more ethical use of surveillance footage.

  1. Enhances Evidence Credibility

By combining Video analytics into a complete video investigation platform, you can organise results into a format that’s easy to present. Features like event tagging, visual timelines, and annotations improve the credibility and clarity of evidence in court.

Indeed in 2017, UK Judge Richard Mansell QC deemed that the use the Kinesense video analytics to analyse thousands of video files was an independent review and was instrumental to the trial in the murder of Sian Roberts

  1. Combine real-time alerts & post event

Video analytics certainly has its place in real-time analysis to highlight potential events for monitoring personnel, but its true beauty is that real-time analysis can be combined with post-event analysis. Video AI can be useful when you know what you are looking for, and when you don’t.    

  1. Complements other evidence searches

Video metadata like GPS and timestamps can be compared and cross-referenced with other intelligence data like cell phone data. At Kinesense, our solution allows users to plot key video movements on maps and then overlay GPS and timestamp data, helping investigators to confirm important details, and even identify new locations of interest.

  1. Large scale for complex cases

Large investigations often involve footage from multiple cameras and locations. Video analytics can process and analyse data across all these sources simultaneously, ensuring no detail is overlooked in complex cases. The Kinesense attribute recognition algorithms are perfect for large cases comprising many video sources. You can use it to find similar people based on their appearance like shirt colour, hat, bag etc.

  1. Detection, Similarity Identification &  Recognition 

For some law enforcement agencies, data privacy concerns and regulations mean they cannot use technologies like face recognition and ANPR. This is why Kinesense also develops the option of analytics that focus on the detection of people and vehicles using appearance-based criteria. This can help you find similar people based on appearance without the need to analyse against a facial recognition database. When have found your persons or vehicles of interest, and have the relevant permission, facial recognition and ANPR can then be used.  

  1. Saves Resources and Reduces Costs

While there’s an initial investment in video analytics software, it quickly pays for itself by cutting down the manual labour and time required for investigations. This efficiency results in significant cost savings for law enforcement and private security teams.

In a recent case with another UK police force’s Major Investigation Team, 643 hours of CCTV video was obtained in relation to the crime. Of these 643 hours, using Kinesense LE to filter only areas of interest, the force needed to watch just 70 hours, resulting in a saving of 573 hours of actual viewing time. Based on this force’s costing of £20/hour for the individual reviewing the video, the force effectively saved over £11,000 on that one job alone.

Kinesense customers typically save 75-95% of their time reviewing videos using our solution. Importantly, this means that you can use your time elsewhere.  

  1. Enhances Collaboration Across Teams

Video analytics tools often come with features for securely sharing footage and insights with team members or external agencies. This promotes seamless collaboration and ensures everyone works with the most relevant and up-to-date evidence.

Artificial intelligence is a rapidly growing field and its benefits are plenty but law enforcement have particular considerations to take into account. At Kinesense, we have been developing AI solutions for over 15 years with a unique focus on the needs of the law enforcement sector. Contact us if you would like to explore how to make the best of this technology in your organisation.