Axon, a global leader in connected law enforcement technologies, has announced the launch of Axon Citizen, a public safety portal that allows community members to submit evidence directly to law enforcement agencies only for crimes under investigation.

There are two ways in which officers can solicit help from the community: one-on-one between an officer and the citizen, or with a community-wide broadcast requesting information on a specific crime. The one-on-one tool is available now for Axon customers signed up for early access. It will be available to all U.S. customers on the Evidence.com Pro, Ultimate, or Unlimited licensing tiers at no incremental cost, with no additional storage fees, later this year. The large-event community broadcast Citizen tool will include additional software capabilities to help triage the massive amounts of data that may be submitted and will be available for an additional enterprise license based on the size of the agency. Learn more by visiting www.axon.com/citizen.

“Axon Citizen is a great example of the power of our cloud-based technology model,” says Axon CEO and founder, Rick Smith. “Our customers will receive the breakthrough ability to collect one-on-one information from members of the community via a seamless software update. Similar to when we launched multi-cam sync a few months ago, we endeavor to delight our customers with unexpected new features that extend the capability of their Axon experience.”

With the increasing prevalence of photos and video recordings being captured on mobile devices, Axon Citizen enables law enforcement agencies to securely receive and manage community submissions relating to a specific crime. The citizen receives a URL via text message that they can click to upload their photos or video footage. The evidence goes straight into Evidence.com so community members do not need to hand their phones over to police. The direct upload to Evidence.com eliminates any need for officers to download, print and transfer data to a USB drive and physically place it inside an evidence locker at the agency.

Axon Citizen will include the following features and benefits:

* Accelerates the review process: Axon Citizen's triage tool allows the reviewer to quickly decide which submissions to accept or decline.

* Streamlines searching: All submissions are automatically categorized and searchable within Evidence.com to simplify case building.

* Keeps community privacy in mind: For people who prefer to submit evidence without formal attribution, Axon Citizen allows the community member to submit without inputting any personal information.

* Offers network reliability: Axon Citizen provides agencies the infrastructure and tools needed to support large volumes of submissions, so agencies can remain confident during large-scale events.

* Seamless integration with Evidence.com: Data submitted with Axon Citizen is maintained at the highest levels of security and compliance on Axon's Evidence.com solution.

In addition to working with public safety agencies, Axon surveyed a sampling of more than 1,500 community members nationwide to develop a system that would suit their needs. The survey found that more than one-fifth (21%) of respondents had captured digital evidence pertinent to a police investigation, but fewer than half (45%) had submitted that evidence to the police. More than half of respondents (65%) were extremely likely or somewhat likely to proceed with sharing evidence if only a text message was involved. With this valuable community input, we were able to create a product that meets the needs of both law enforcement officers and citizens.

Axon Citizen is a feature of Axon’s Evidence.com solution, a proven cloud service that provides law enforcement secure workflows and sharing capabilities to aid in the management of digital evidence. Evidence.com maintains ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 certifications, has been awarded the Cloud Security Alliance’s STAR Level 2 attestation, and has contractually committed to the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy within all states.

Axon will be showcasing Axon Citizen along with other products at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia on Oct. 22-23, at Booth Number 2825.

*Axon Citizen will do everything possible to not capture obvious attribution data without tampering with the evidence submission, or destroying the usefulness of the submitted evidence. To be clear, while Evidence.com is not capturing any personal contact information, there is still metadata embedded in the image being submitted, and the inherent contextual information in the image/video/audio itself that could be used through investigative efforts by law enforcement to identify the submitter.