Breton Regional Police Services will be the first to use new IBM Research technology to help investigators analyze clues and solve violent crimes more quickly. The new tool will enable detectives to transmit evidence gathered at a crime scene to a police database, and then retrieve, share, search and analyze it from squad cars, the streets, or other locations and jurisdictions. The technology is currently being tested in Cape Breton using data from a solved murder case. "Policing costs Canadians about $7.9 billion a year, or almost two-thirds of the total criminal justice expenditures," said Edgar MacLeod, chief of Cape Breton Regional Police Service. "By automating the capture and analysis of evidence, we decrease the administrative burden on our officers, so they can focus on their main responsibility, which is crime prevention." IBM developed the advanced data mining and content management tool to convert video and audio material such as wiretaps, interrogations and surveillance tapes, and text-based evidence such as interview notes or witness statements, into digital files that can be queried for common links, patterns, objects such as vehicles, or even faces. IBM is collaborating on the research project with Cape Breton police, ADM Solutions, a local business partner, and Cape Breton University. The university, involved since the project's inception, is investigating how to further integrate voice recognition technologies into the system, developing training and e-learning materials and providing overall project management.