Bringing New Communications Capabilities to Law Enforcement:Communications Technologies Center of Excellence (COE)

The NLECTC - Communications Technologies Center of Excellence (COE) is tasked with supporting the National Institute of Justice's Development, Testing and Evaluation (DT&E) activities within the Communications Technology (CommTech) portfolio and related areas by:
o Identifying technology requirements
o Supporting the NIJ's research and development programs
o Testing, evaluation and demonstrating technologies
o Supporting the adoption of new technologies
o Developing technology guidelines
o Providing technology assistance and education.
In addition, the NLECTC - Communications Technologies Center of Excellence (COE) compliments efforts in the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technologies Center(NLECTC) System.

A portion of this award, funded with COPS DNA/Forensics funds, will reduce the backlog of existing DNA cases by: Testing and evaluating remote command and control technologies to enable crime labs to inspect rural crime scenes in the following tasks, Information Gathering, Collection and Rapid Dissemination of Forensic data.

As noted in The Census of Publicly Funded Forensics Crime Laboratories (2002) notes that 1,917 new FTEs would be required to achieve a 30 day turnaround on all forensics requests received in 2002. In addition, better managerial controls and stronger technical competency are essential to improve performance among existing resources.

To that end, the proposed collaboration between the NLECTC Communications Technologies Center of Excellence and the NLECTC Forensics Technologies Center of Excellence included under application number 2008-92086-NJ-DN, and Office of Science and Technology Continuation of 20070-IJ-CX-K013 directly addresses the issues of stronger managerial controls and technical competency as it relates to gathering, collecting and rapidly disseminating forensics information.

The trial, evaluation and training environment established in the collaborative project will provide for capacity building among forensics professionals and other law enforcement teams called upon to support forensics activities during complex response conditions. When the results are disseminated, this effort will provide a framework for better information management among forensics and communications professionals.

This project contributes to the reduction of DNA backlog via the following approach:

' Test and evaluate remote command and control technologies to enable crime labs to inspect rural crime scenes can help the following areas:
o Information Gathering
o Collection and Rapid Dissemination

nca/ncf

The applicant proposes to host, within the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center System, the Communications Technologies Center of Excellence (COE). Activities include 1) hosting the Technology Working Group (TWG) meetings that develop research goals to assist law enforcement (LE) agencies communications needs, 2) assisting the NIJ portfolio manager in enhancing the research and development (R&D) for LE communication tools, 3) providing a mechanism for testing, evaluation and demonstrations technologies and tools for law enforcement agencies that have been developed either by our grantees or from outside parties and disseminating the results appropriately, 4) supporting the adoption of communications technologies by law enforcement agencies that were developed either by our grantees or by outside parties, 5) assisting in developing communication technology guidelines and standards that draw from Technical Working Group requirements, research and development conducted by grantees and/or the test, evaluation and demonstration activities of the Center of Excellence, and 6) when requested, providing specialized technology assistance to local agencies requesting assistance for law enforcement communications technology and tools.

nca/ncf