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62 Days to 7
A county public safety agency with more than 200 sworn officers was taking about 150 public information requests a month. Two staff handled disclosure. The 28% of requests involving video or audio consumed roughly three quarters of their hours.
The Situation
The body-worn camera programme started in 2022. By the time 175 body-worn and in-car units were in service, two people were handling every public information request the agency received, video, audio and documents alike.
Video was the minority of the volume and most of the work: 28% of requests, 76% of redaction hours.
That share comes from how long manual redaction takes. A typical video request runs five to ten hours of work for each hour of footage. A crowded scene with several objects to keep tracked runs fifteen to thirty. One request, a 30-minute foot pursuit on a single body-worn camera, took eight to ten hours, because the pursuit crossed crowded areas and caught license plates, house numbers and bystanders throughout.
Average video release time was 62 days. Written notices that a deadline could not be met went out about 50 times a month — one request in three.
Every redaction call also carried a legal basis. A bystander and a juvenile are treated differently. A plate on an uninvolved vehicle identifies someone who was never part of the case. An address read out over dispatch never appears on screen at all. The reviewer decided each one, had to account for it if a release was questioned, and nothing recorded the reasoning.
What Was Deployed
| Organization | A county public safety agency |
| Sworn officers | 200+ |
| Camera programme | 175 body-worn and in-car units, in service since 2022 |
| Request volume | ~150 public information requests a month, 28% involving video or audio |
| Products | Redactor, AI Intelligence Hub |
| Deployment | On-premises, integrated with the agency's cloud evidence management system |
| Systems integrated | Existing DEMS, records management, computer-aided dispatch |
The important part: nothing was replaced. Redactor was deployed alongside the evidence management system the agency already ran, on the agency's own infrastructure.
Results, First Six Months
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Average video release time | 62 days | 7 days |
| Missed-deadline notices | ~50 a month | ~12 a month |
| Investigator effort per case | ~8 hours | 45 minutes |
| Prosecutor packages | 3 business days | Same day |
The agency has met every date it has set since.
Why It Worked
Detection removed the frame-by-frame work, which is where the 76% of hours went. Faces, plates, house numbers and bystanders are tracked across the clip rather than redrawn per frame.
The exemption basis is recorded as the redaction is made, so the reasoning that previously lived in a reviewer's memory now travels with the file.
It ran on the agency's own infrastructure, alongside the existing evidence system, so the camera programme, the storage and the chain of custody all stayed where they were.
Run Your Own Numbers
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