Digital Evidence

The new way to submit digital evidence for West Midlands businesses and organisations.

West Midlands Police have introduced a more streamlined method to collect digital evidence through our new Digital Evidence Store (DES). Digital evidence, such as CCTV, plays a major part in most of our investigations. As our digital footprint is growing so are our investigative opportunities. While we hope as a local business or organisation within West Midlands that you will never need to contact us, we understand that if you need to, you are more likely to need to submit digital evidence to us. Our new Digital Evidence Store means that we will be moving away from collecting evidence on CDs and USBs, and move to a new capability where partners can upload their evidence securely to a digital store.

Why are we changing how we gather digital evidence?

Historically the only method for gathering digital evidence would be for us to visit a location and copy evidence to physical media, such as disc or USB. We know this isn’t efficient for either you or us and we hope this change will offer greater flexibility when you submit your evidence.

How will the new process work?

If the evidence will help our investigation, we will send a text message or email with a link to upload evidence. The platform we
use is ‘Axon - evidence.com’. When you receive this request, the link will direct you to a web portal, where evidence can simply be uploaded. This link is valid for ten days. Once uploaded, the evidence is then accessible to officers to allow them to further investigate, and share with other partners such as prosecution and defence.

What will the benefit to you be?

This new solution provides you with a way to share evidence at a time convenient to you. It also removes the need for using discs and USB devices, creating a more efficient process that will allow sharing evidence between key partners easier. It will allow greater access to quality evidence, reduce time to investigate and play a part in being able to provide better outcomes.

What if you feel that you can’t support the change?

We understand there will be some circumstances where this new process isn’t possible, for example if your CCTV system is not linked to the internet. In these situations, there will still be a need to use hard media such as a disc or USB to transfer evidence to a device that has internet connection or to be collected. Alternatively, we can send out an evidence pack in the post.

Further guidance and support

Further guidance can be found on our website. www.westmidlands.police.uk