November 3, 2025 • 25 mins
Episode: 00291 Released on November 3, 2025 Description: In the fifth episode of the "Did You Know?" series, Mike Winslow explores the world of hidden data, the overlooked information already sitting in law enforcement systems. From CAD records and field interview cards to modern body-worn camera footage, Mike shares real examples of how uncovering these underused data sources can make or break an investigation. They discuss the importance of collaborating with dispatch, understanding data dictionaries, and asking the right questions to access valuable fields that don’t always make it into analyst databases. Plus, Mike reveals a recent homicide case where tracing a “hidden” phone number led to key suspects and new evidence. This episode highlights how looking beyond reports can reveal investigative gold that many analysts overlook. 🎧 Listen, share, and keep talking! [Note: Description produced by ChatGPT.] Get to know more about Mike by listening to his episode on Analyst Talk With Jason Elder: https://www.leapodcasts.com/e/episode-006-mike-winslow-%e2%80%93-the-ambassador/
Name Drops: Albert Mesa/Brittany Winslow Related Links: https://www.axon.com/ https://www.coronasolutions.com https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/body-worn-cameras All Deep Dive Episodes: https://www.leapodcasts.com/p/deep-dives/
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Contact: mwinslow@scottsdaleaz.gov; https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikewinslow1414/
Transcript: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/k9rkg88imk64hrwu/DYK05_transcript.pdf
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.
(00:01):
It's like coffee with an analyst,or it could be whiskey with an
analyst reading a spreadsheet,linking crime events, identifying a
series, and getting the latest scoopon association news and training.
So please don't beat that analystand join us as we define the law
enforcement analysis profession.
One episode at a time.
How we doing?
Analysts, Jason Elder here withanother LE, a podcast Deep Dive.
(00:23):
Did you know with Mike Winslow?
Mike, how we doing?
Great, man.
How are you?
I am doing well.
You know, fall in Florida.
It's good.
Getting a little Floridachilly, , it's so, it's good.
How about Arizona?
, What is Florida?
Chilly by the way?
Like gimme the, like degrees wise, I knowyou guys still have the humidity, but
Yeah.
So it's getting like eightiesduring the day and it'll get
(00:44):
down into the fifties at night.
Okay.
I mean that's, so it's very
comfortable.
Evening walks with thewife and dog is very nice.
We're
doing a lot of those, but Brittand Parker we're getting out.
We're kind of right about the sameright now, the like probably low
eighties to mid eighties and thenlike fifties, sixties at night.
It's turning that cornerwhere it's like paradise here.
(01:05):
And then it's gonna be a.
Awesome.
All the way through what, probablylike April-ish is when it starts to
get kind of hot again , very rare.
It's only happened two timesin my lifetime that we've had
snow like down in the valley.
Obviously I grew up withit in Colorado, but.
Arizona, unless you're up waynorth, that's not a thing.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody that Florida
didn't get that either.
(01:25):
So
everybody in the north hatesyou when you said it's gonna be
paralyzed till April because Exactly.
That's why we have snowbirds,that's why we call 'em that.
Because they, they flee the snowand come and come to the greatness
that is the vale of the sun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, whichis like I don't know, set some kind
of record for Cloudiest days everyyear, and so it's like, people won't,
(01:47):
probably won't see the sun till April.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I, I that, I think we, onaverage, like there's only.
We have like 350 days ofsunshine or something.
Like even the days that it'scloudy, it's not for long.
I don't, I don't know howI'd function without the sun.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it, it does get depressing.
Plus we're changing times The timechange is coming up and then see, that's
(02:08):
great about Arizona too.
We don't even play that game.
Oh, so you That's true, that's true.
So yeah, it's in Pennsylvania, notonly is it cloudy and it's cold, rainy,
snowy, it also gets dark at five o'clock.
Yeah, it, I will say it does.
It does still impact us though,and I only know that it's a thing.
Because it changes thekickoff times for football.
Oh.
They, they change 'cause we actuallydo change time zones, but we
(02:31):
don't ever actually change time.
So it's kind of a weird dynamic 'causewe're, that's why like most times when
people know if you're checking likeyour time zones, Arizona has its own
and it's just because we're alwaysUTC minus seven, which is great.
For the phone record side I don't everhave to worry about that unless they
cross over into a different state.
So,
yeah.
I think we're ready to retire.
(02:52):
We can we're get get oldand talk about the weather.
Yeah.
Right.
All right.
What are we talking about today?
So the topic today we kind ofwanted to get into was hidden Data.
Mm-hmm.
And by hidden data what I meanby that is not so much the, the,
you know, we go through dataall the time as analysts, right?
All these different types.
(03:12):
And by hidden I'm talking aboutthe stuff that it's right there.
It's in those systemsthat you're searching.
And you might not be fully utilizingsome of that data to really help when it
comes to some of these investigations.
So the first example that we talkabout would be your CAD data, right?
So whenever someonecalls in to the police.
(03:32):
All of that data is getting recorded,dates and times, locations phone
numbers, names that they're giving, allthat data is getting stored, hopefully
in your records management system,somewhere where you can query it.
Especially being able to assignor get numbers tied to people.
I use our CAD data all thetime to see, especially if
they're local to, to my city.
(03:53):
I can see, hey, if they ever.
Called in, called 9 1 1, wherethe cops called to their house.
It's another way to alsolink addresses, right?
If they call and say, someone broke intomy home and they give this address, and
it was just a week ago, and I'm tryingto verify that that's their address.
It's a pretty great way because Ijust put 'em there a week prior.
So tons of different things thatyou can find in, that CAD data.
(04:15):
Another system would be we call 'em.
FIS or field information cards.
Sometimes people call 'em fieldcontacts or something to that nature.
Basically, whatever you callit, it's a documentation that is
just getting put into the system.
The officer on the road contacts somebody.
They're not committing a crime, butlet's say they're out in an area.
(04:39):
Late at night that's beenhaving a bunch of burglaries.
They didn't see 'em do anything,but they have a backpack on dressing
all black and don't have a greatstory as to why they're there.
Mm-hmm.
Can't really charge anybody for that,but we can at least document the contact.
I can tell you back when I was doinga lot more of our property crimes,
I those all the time to help usfigure out who some of the prominent
(05:02):
burglars and stuff were in the area.
Because if, if there's proactive.
Patrols and things like that going on.
That's a huge goldmine and I think a lotof people kind of get wrapped up too much
in looking at just the reports and readingthrough reports and what's in those that
they forget about kind of those two.
Really big fields that stillexist within police data.
(05:23):
With the hidden data though, thisis, something that isn't innately
already being given to an analyst.
I know that vendors are going to supplycertain basic data that every client
of theirs departments ask them for, butthis is data that's being captured, but.
Maybe unless you ask for it specifically,isn't going to show up in the analyst
(05:47):
database, and this is something you reallygotta go dig for, ask for to examine it.
Absolutely.
And, and just to kind of bolt off of thattoo, getting with say your dispatchers
or a supervisor over there to see whattheir process looks like of how they're
entering the data and what it looks like.
They could be on atotally different system.
(06:08):
Like for us in Scottsdale, ourrecords management system and
our CAD are two separate vendors.
Now they play nice with eachother and they speak each
other's language, so to speak.
Right.
And will import and, andexport various amounts of data.
But there, I'm sure there'sdata that's on the CAD side.
(06:28):
That isn't getting captured when it getsover to the records management system.
So finding out if there's other fields,like different types of locations or any
other types of numbers or call notes stuffthat might not be getting captured in the
report, if I'm just querying my general,records management system that I, I could
be missing that data that's in there.
Yeah, I, I remember Albert Mesa.
(06:50):
When he was on the showand he's dispatcher turned
analyst that he went, he knew.
He is like, wait a minute, Iknow that timestamp is there.
It should, it's not coming over.
And he actually went over to the 9 1 1center and said, okay, where is this?
We gotta track this.
It was important for thecase that he was working on.
So I do know this is where it's,it's beneficial either to have
(07:13):
that 9 1 1 dispatch or contact.
Mm-hmm.
Or if you do have a Albert Mesa.
In your shop, the one, somebody that wasa former 9 1 1 dispatcher that's gonna
be able to get ahold of some of thisdata, or at least know what to ask for.
'cause I think that's, that's kind halfthe challenge is going to be asking the
right question, either of the vendoror your IT staff to go look for it.
(07:36):
In your system with, with yourRMS cad, do you have a data
dictionary that you can search
You know, that's a great question.
We've kind of bouncedback and forth mm-hmm.
Between when we switched over toa new one and then kind of, kind
of went back with the old one.
I'm sure there's still something that,that exists that I should probably double
check and, and see that that is out there.
(07:58):
Mm-hmm.
But kind of like you said,utilizing those types of resources.
I'm also very lucky you mentionedAlbert, but my wife was also a former
dispatcher, so now it was for adifferent agency, but she still knew
those whole, back roads and, and thingsof that nature of how that data goes.
So even being able to.
Pick her brain on some of this stuff too.
(08:19):
But finding someone over thereand just being like, Hey, here's
what I want to get and, and here'swhat I'm looking to do with it.
Does that already exist or dowe need to create something?
And like you said, getting some type ofreference of most of these places have
some type of a key or data dictionarylike you said, that will explain a
lot easier as far as like, this iswhat this field means and this is what
this is and things of that nature.
(08:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Your wife, Brittany Winslow, I thinkshe actually told us some more story.
Yes.
Of what I was justdescribing of, of Albert.
So, yeah, so there's definitely those,the advantage of being a former dispatch
and knowing what questions to answer.
I, I know at my shop we do havea data dictionary for our record
system, and there are times where Isee it in the data dictionary, but
(09:02):
I'm not seeing it in my database.
I have to go request itit to get it populated.
In the database.
'cause they don't actuallybring everything over.
So it's captured in the recordsmanagement system, but it's not
being brought over to the database.
Right.
So that's a, that's another key thingwhen you're, when you're looking at this
stuff, is there may be data that analystsdon't have access to and you never know
(09:25):
when it's gonna be important to your case.
Right.
Or, or just simply if, if you're on theside of doing the type of analysis where
you are calculating like a response times.
Making sure that even though that arrivalfield says arrival and it has a time,
what are, what's, what's arrival mean?
Right?
Mm-hmm.
Does, how does that get calculated?
Does that get calculated when theyqueue up and say, Hey, I've arrived.
(09:49):
Is it geolocated where the.
Their patrol car gets within a certainamount of the, or gets to the address
and it says, okay, they've arrived now.
Different things like that.
And then same thingwith when it's cleared.
If we're trying to see how long arethey staying on these calls, well
how are we clearing those calls?
What is, what is it thatthat goes into that process?
So it just, anything havingto do with data, you know.
(10:12):
Getting to the people that delve init all the time and asking some of
those questions, so then you betterunderstand it, you know, once, once
you've been doing this for a while.
I, I always kind of joke with it,like, I feel like as an analyst you can
analyze pretty much any data once youkind of get in and, and get used to it.
But you need to know whatthe data is and how it works.
Once you get in, then all the samestuff applies the data's data.
(10:34):
Mm-hmm.
So you just need to knowwhat those ins and outs are.
With the field interview, Ithink we called 'em fur cards.
Yeah.
Department.
I was at fur cards fieldinterview report cards.
What was some hidden, datathat you found in that data.
So same, same kind of thing, you know,in terms of if I, if I'm researching
into a suspect or a subject finding otheridentifiers in terms of phone numbers I
(10:58):
mean, if they, I don't know, they givean email in the, in that situation,
but you could have something like that.
Even the narrative itself, in termsof the circumstances of the contact,
if, if I'm not looking, if I'm lookingover that stuff and only relying
on reports there could be other.
Potential I sometimes crimes.
I, I, I can tell you I've readplenty of, of those field info cards
(11:19):
and went, okay, there's a crimethat occurred here and they didn't
actually like do a report for that.
Mm-hmm.
And so you might find other, you know,linkage of other cases by going through
and, and making sure that you're readingthat, those, those types of reports too.
Yeah.
Well, no, I mean, if you had a majorcrime in a, on a particular street, yeah.
You, you might be might beable to identify some potential
(11:41):
witnesses that were part of acar stop or a field interview.
You know that it's onlylike a block or two away.
Exactly.
So.
Yeah, you kinda never know that if Iwas thinking, you know, and depending
on the, the, the data entry techniquefor the officer in, into those,
like, you know, back, back in theday, everything was written by, by
hand, so you really didn't capture a.
(12:02):
State timestamps or Right, or GPScoordinates or anything like that.
But now they got gadgets and gizmostablets and cell phones and all, all that
other stuff, capturing this information.
So all of that.
Should have GPS coordinates shouldhave timestamp information as, as the
officer is filling out the fur card.
(12:24):
Yeah,
exactly.
So you just jumping in and, and,and reviewing all that stuff.
You might see people get mentioned inthose as well, that they don't then
list a, that person in the name record.
So if you were to search.
That person's name in yourrecords, it's not gonna come up.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
But they get named in thatreport and you're only gonna
see that by going through andactually seeing that narrative.
(12:45):
What other things have you found interms of might have some hidden data?
So, the, the biggest one nowadays, it'slike my new favorite, and I say new
'cause it's not new, it's been aroundfor a long time, is, is body cameras.
The body-worn camerafootage is an absolute.
I said goldmine before, but, butwe'll call it the Diamond Mind or
anything about that because it isso rich and heavy in information.
(13:10):
Mm-hmm.
And it's kind of funny watching itevolve over the course of my career.
Right.
Because, like, when I first started,not to date myself too much now,
but it, it's coming that way.
We didn't have body cams, right?
That wasn't a thing.
And in fact, our department was oneof the first ones that jumped on.
'cause Axon is, is, ishoused in Scottsdale.
Their headquarters is here.
And they weren't even calledAxon and they were called Taser.
(13:31):
And they were getting into that body camfield and, and we kind of tested it out
and now, . Even an agency with only twoofficers have body cams, it's become kind
of the standard and needs to be there.
Mm-hmm.
And I will say the one thing that,that it has kind of degraded or brought
down is the quality of report writing.
Mm-hmm.
(13:51):
I think there's a big reliance on.
Footage.
And so there's a lot of things that getmore kind of summarized in a report that
used to be a lot more detail oriented.
To me, if I'm working on a case andI'm, I'm looking into a particular
individual, I'm gonna go in and thefirst thing I'm doing when I'm starting
my first process is I'm going andwatching that footage and, and seeing
(14:12):
what kind of stuff I can glean from it.
And then as I'm doing the research.
Being able to see whatother people are involved.
Right.
So again, using the, if I'm tryingto locate a suspect, we just went out
to that house a week before, well, acouple things we're gonna get there.
One where you can put them ator in that address potentially
stating, yes, I lived here.
I've lived here for thepast X amount of years.
(14:34):
You could get easy things in termsof, from an officer safety standpoint.
You know them if they walk in thehouse, now you have a whole view
of the inside of the house and whatit looks like in its current state.
Mm-hmm.
That could be super helpful as opposed tolooking at, say, just a satellite image
or, they drove by and took camera of it.
So, you know, when you're, they,they walk in and there's a huge
(14:56):
like samurai sword on the wallthat's right there by the door.
And you're like, and Isay, I use that example.
'cause we've had that that might be a goodthing to, to put in your workup right?
When you're saying, Hey, just soyou know, there's a huge sword
that's off to the side of thisdoor when he's gonna answer it.
Different things like that.
So like hidden data in, in that regard.
That's not actual like data, right?
(15:16):
It's not your traditional datawhere it is something tangible
where you can query and, and use it.
It is, it's more observational.
With the body cam footage, therecording, obviously you're,
you're able to review the video.
You, you mentioned searchable.
Does your system or whatyou worked with, deliver
(15:37):
the transcription of, of what it is.
'cause obviously the speech to texttechnology in combination with the
body cam technology has grown and,and developed immensely over our time.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and that's a great pointis you were correct in that
it is auto transcribing now.
Yeah.
Where you can go into it andsee the whole conversation.
(16:00):
You could query out.
So it does actually makethat data searchable.
Mm-hmm.
In a different way where you could searchfor keywords and it's gonna pop up in the,
that conversation of that specific part.
Or you can, you can actually clickon the word and it'll jump you.
To that part of the conversation.
So the technology is, is crazy in termsof, of that, that side of the house.
(16:20):
And that's a great point.
I will say something else that just kindof hit when I've talked about this before
in, viewing and getting access to thatdata is getting access to that data.
Mm-hmm.
We even had, some hurdles initially toget access to, to view that footage.
And there were, you know, some peoplethat thought that as the analyst,
that we didn't need to view that datathat it wasn't gonna help at all.
(16:45):
And I had a detective that was verymuch the opposite opinion of that,
and was able to get us some access.
In a particular case, and Iwas able to actually go through
that and realize that one of theguys was misidentifying himself.
'cause as I went through it, I waslike, Hey, that he's saying that's
his name, but that's not who that is.
(17:06):
And nobody knew that until I. Sawthat going through the data, and then
that kind of helped to give a goodspringboard of like, Hey, this is why
it's important to have the people thatare deep diving into this data and these
people to be able to review this stuffbecause we're gonna find things or see
stuff that happens in it that maybeyour case detective doesn't even know.
So when you said.
He was misidentify himself.
(17:27):
You're talking about the suspector the civilian that, that's on
the, that's on the camera, right?
Yeah.
The suspect in this case was he,
he was giving a he was usinghis brother's name and date of
birth and it was very close.
They, they were close in age and so.
They didn't verify, they weren'table to verify that at the time.
And, but once I was looking intothis group, I was like, hang
(17:48):
on, that's the guy's brother.
That's not him.
And so that, that helpedwith that later on.
Yeah.
Where my head was going.
I thought the officermisidentified himself.
I was like, well, no wonder theydon't want you looking at footage.
No, no, nothing, nothing like that.
You know?
And the other thing too is if,if people are getting pushback
on that one of the things.
To that point, this stuff is alllogged and , there's systems in place.
(18:12):
If I go in today and go in and reviewfootage, it says I looked at it.
You can audit that and it can show that.
Right.
So I know just like any other parts ofdata, like there's certain things you
making sure that you're staying withinpolicy of am I. Able to view this.
Am I allowed to view this?
I know e even some of the otherones, depending on what you
(18:32):
use, they can lock down certain.
Footage and only make it, availableto supervisors or, specific people.
So there's safeguards in place.
It's not like this free for all.
Once I get in, I'm like, oh man, I'mgonna go look at all this crazy stuff.
Like, I don't have time to do that, man.
I gotta do all these other things.
I, can't just go watchevery, contact that we have.
(18:53):
Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's a lot.
And.
Your system.
, How long do, they keep that footage?
What's the time limit on that?
So the, like, the quick and likepull it up now and view it mm-hmm.
Is about, is usually a year.
Oh, okay.
For most cases.
But then what happens isit doesn't ever go away.
(19:13):
It gets archived after that.
Okay.
So then if you pull upsomething from older.
You can, , basically request thearchive and it'll, it'll pull that out
from the archive so you can view it.
I don't know.
I know there still isa retention schedule.
Like we, we couldn'tkeep all of that forever.
Right.
Video Yeah.
Takes up a ton.
Yeah.
And I think it depends on the, onthe case and the type of case as
(19:35):
to why they keep that part of it.
But then they can also download that.
Then store it somewhere else and thenit wouldn't get caught up in that type
of retention when it comes to that part.
But that's like a, I'm, I'm speakinga little out of my field on that.
That's more of like a records typething in terms of 'cause they also
are the ones that are going throughlater when the news and other
(19:57):
things like that request that info.
Mm-hmm.
They're doing all the redactions whereit blurs out faces and, and other things
like that, that we have people that.
That's one of their main jobsis to go through and, and redact
just like these do in reports.
Right.
And take out the sensitive data.
Sure.
They gotta do the same thing with thevideo too, and kind of scrub through
that and make sure that it's it'sbeing the people's information's being.
(20:20):
Yeah, man.
Geez.
Oh, you're gonna need the crypto stylewarehouse to keep all this information.
I know, right?
All right.
So do you get a, good exampleof some of this hidden data
that we've been talking about?
Yeah,
actually I have
a, a great example that literallyjust happened a week ago for a,
a homicide case that we just had.
And as I was doing my research andgoing through some of the stuff
(20:44):
on this case one of our suspects Ifound had called in a theft report of
his cell phone and the phone numberthat he called in on with that was.
Not the phone number that I hadalready found associated to him.
And at the time we were still lookingfor some other co-conspirators
or, or suspects, if you will.
(21:05):
And so I started to kind of run with thatnumber and I started looking into it.
I find a potential subject related tothat number, and so I'm thinking, Hey,
this could be somebody worth, looking at.
I pull up , the body camerafootage from that theft report.
And lo and behold it is one of the two ofthe other guys actually that we're looking
(21:25):
for, that are with our suspect, or oursuspect in this in the theft of his phone
that we can see clear as day and diggingin and, and looking through social media.
This individual who I found thenumber associated to when I found
his social media he had posted astory the night of our incident that
put them all together as well at alocation that we didn't know about.
(21:48):
So it added in and, and kind ofall grew off of literally digging
into that part of data on a phonenumber from a CAD system That then
gave me a, a positive identificationon a couple other people and then.
Led to a social media account that thengave us some, some evidence that we
ended up using for that that evening.
So all those little thingsended up into like one kind
(22:09):
of big thing of, information.
Yeah, I, I'm, and I might bedating myself 'cause obviously
when you look at CAD information.
It's gonna give you the type of call.
It's gonna give you theday and time, an address.
I don't know if innately in theCAD system, for analyst, if you're
gonna get the phone number thatactually made the call, that might
(22:32):
be something you have to ask for.
Yeah.
Well, and it kind of depends.
So I know like for us, , we havea software discover through Corona
Solutions that gives us a kindof a, a search tool for our cad.
And so if I'm looking through and I putin a phone number or I put in a subject,
I can see those, that information.
(22:52):
Or on the other end, if I'm searchingfor a subject through our records
management for a report, right?
It's gonna be tied to an event number inour cad, I can go run that and actually
pull up the call notes and then seewhat, what exactly was going on as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So sometimes it's extra extensions.
Sometimes you might have to, likeyou said, get in with someone.
(23:13):
In the CAD data world there, that theymay already have something that exists.
I know for that tool they weren'tthinking about using it for investigative,
but I use it all the time for that.
Mm-hmm.
No, that's a, that's a good point.
It it, I was smiling there and thinkingabout, like, we always joked around
if we could get the CAD data fromthe big pizza joint in the city.
(23:36):
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
That has, that has to have so muchgood information in terms of address.
Oh man.
You get names, phone number,
which I mean, you could usewhatever name you want, right?
Yeah.
But I would think most people Iknow still use their real name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We always joked around about that.
I was like, man, if we couldget that data, we probably
could identify a lot of folks.
(23:57):
Yeah, definitely.
Very, very good.
All right, so let's just wrap this up.
Like the title of this series is,fill in the blank, did you know,
Did you know there's
more data than you think that's out there.
Good.
All right, Mike, as always appreciate it.
For those listeners, if you havea good example of some hidden data
(24:20):
leave a comment in on social media.
You can always email me atlea podcasts@gmail.com and.
We will put links to additionalinformation in the show notes and
ways to contact both Mike and I.All right, Mike, thank you so much.
Any last words?
No, man.
Thank you.
This has, this has been fun.
I always
enjoy catching up with you onthese and, and hopefully, people
(24:43):
are getting something out of this.
And kinda like you said,give us some feedback.
If, if there's any topics you want us totalk about or if there's anything that you
found useful, it's always good to know.
I I always like to hear that stuff.
All right.
Did you know with Mike Winslow?
All right.
Thank you and take care bud.
Thanks, man.
Thank you for making it tothe end of another episode of
Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.
You can show your support by sharingthis in other episodes found on
(25:06):
our website@www.podcasts.com.
If you have a topic you would likeus to cover or have a suggestion for
our next guest, please send us anemail at Elliot podcasts@gmail.com.
Till next time, analysts, keep talking.
Welcome to Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.
(00:01):
It's like coffee with an analyst,or it could be whiskey with an
analyst reading a spreadsheet,linking crime events, identifying a
series, and getting the latest scoopon association news and training.
So please don't beat that analystand join us as we define the law
enforcement analysis profession.
One episode at a time.
How we doing?
Analysts, Jason Elder here withanother LE, a podcast Deep Dive.
(00:23):
Did you know with Mike Winslow?
Mike, how we doing?
Great, man.
How are you?
I am doing well.
You know, fall in Florida.
It's good.
Getting a little Floridachilly, , it's so, it's good.
How about Arizona?
, What is Florida?
Chilly by the way?
Like gimme the, like degrees wise, I knowyou guys still have the humidity, but
Yeah.
So it's getting like eightiesduring the day and it'll get
(00:44):
down into the fifties at night.
Okay.
I mean that's, so it's very
comfortable.
Evening walks with thewife and dog is very nice.
We're
doing a lot of those, but Brittand Parker we're getting out.
We're kind of right about the sameright now, the like probably low
eighties to mid eighties and thenlike fifties, sixties at night.
It's turning that cornerwhere it's like paradise here.
(01:05):
And then it's gonna be a.
Awesome.
All the way through what, probablylike April-ish is when it starts to
get kind of hot again , very rare.
It's only happened two timesin my lifetime that we've had
snow like down in the valley.
Obviously I grew up withit in Colorado, but.
Arizona, unless you're up waynorth, that's not a thing.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody that Florida
didn't get that either.
(01:25):
So
everybody in the north hatesyou when you said it's gonna be
paralyzed till April because Exactly.
That's why we have snowbirds,that's why we call 'em that.
Because they, they flee the snowand come and come to the greatness
that is the vale of the sun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, whichis like I don't know, set some kind
of record for Cloudiest days everyyear, and so it's like, people won't,
(01:47):
probably won't see the sun till April.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I, I that, I think we, onaverage, like there's only.
We have like 350 days ofsunshine or something.
Like even the days that it'scloudy, it's not for long.
I don't, I don't know howI'd function without the sun.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it, it does get depressing.
Plus we're changing times The timechange is coming up and then see, that's
(02:08):
great about Arizona too.
We don't even play that game.
Oh, so you That's true, that's true.
So yeah, it's in Pennsylvania, notonly is it cloudy and it's cold, rainy,
snowy, it also gets dark at five o'clock.
Yeah, it, I will say it does.
It does still impact us though,and I only know that it's a thing.
Because it changes thekickoff times for football.
Oh.
They, they change 'cause we actuallydo change time zones, but we
(02:31):
don't ever actually change time.
So it's kind of a weird dynamic 'causewe're, that's why like most times when
people know if you're checking likeyour time zones, Arizona has its own
and it's just because we're alwaysUTC minus seven, which is great.
For the phone record side I don't everhave to worry about that unless they
cross over into a different state.
So,
yeah.
I think we're ready to retire.
(02:52):
We can we're get get oldand talk about the weather.
Yeah.
Right.
All right.
What are we talking about today?
So the topic today we kind ofwanted to get into was hidden Data.
Mm-hmm.
And by hidden data what I meanby that is not so much the, the,
you know, we go through dataall the time as analysts, right?
All these different types.
(03:12):
And by hidden I'm talking aboutthe stuff that it's right there.
It's in those systemsthat you're searching.
And you might not be fully utilizingsome of that data to really help when it
comes to some of these investigations.
So the first example that we talkabout would be your CAD data, right?
So whenever someonecalls in to the police.
(03:32):
All of that data is getting recorded,dates and times, locations phone
numbers, names that they're giving, allthat data is getting stored, hopefully
in your records management system,somewhere where you can query it.
Especially being able to assignor get numbers tied to people.
I use our CAD data all thetime to see, especially if
they're local to, to my city.
(03:53):
I can see, hey, if they ever.
Called in, called 9 1 1, wherethe cops called to their house.
It's another way to alsolink addresses, right?
If they call and say, someone broke intomy home and they give this address, and
it was just a week ago, and I'm tryingto verify that that's their address.
It's a pretty great way because Ijust put 'em there a week prior.
So tons of different things thatyou can find in, that CAD data.
(04:15):
Another system would be we call 'em.
FIS or field information cards.
Sometimes people call 'em fieldcontacts or something to that nature.
Basically, whatever you callit, it's a documentation that is
just getting put into the system.
The officer on the road contacts somebody.
They're not committing a crime, butlet's say they're out in an area.
(04:39):
Late at night that's beenhaving a bunch of burglaries.
They didn't see 'em do anything,but they have a backpack on dressing
all black and don't have a greatstory as to why they're there.
Mm-hmm.
Can't really charge anybody for that,but we can at least document the contact.
I can tell you back when I was doinga lot more of our property crimes,
I those all the time to help usfigure out who some of the prominent
(05:02):
burglars and stuff were in the area.
Because if, if there's proactive.
Patrols and things like that going on.
That's a huge goldmine and I think a lotof people kind of get wrapped up too much
in looking at just the reports and readingthrough reports and what's in those that
they forget about kind of those two.
Really big fields that stillexist within police data.
(05:23):
With the hidden data though, thisis, something that isn't innately
already being given to an analyst.
I know that vendors are going to supplycertain basic data that every client
of theirs departments ask them for, butthis is data that's being captured, but.
Maybe unless you ask for it specifically,isn't going to show up in the analyst
(05:47):
database, and this is something you reallygotta go dig for, ask for to examine it.
Absolutely.
And, and just to kind of bolt off of thattoo, getting with say your dispatchers
or a supervisor over there to see whattheir process looks like of how they're
entering the data and what it looks like.
They could be on atotally different system.
(06:08):
Like for us in Scottsdale, ourrecords management system and
our CAD are two separate vendors.
Now they play nice with eachother and they speak each
other's language, so to speak.
Right.
And will import and, andexport various amounts of data.
But there, I'm sure there'sdata that's on the CAD side.
(06:28):
That isn't getting captured when it getsover to the records management system.
So finding out if there's other fields,like different types of locations or any
other types of numbers or call notes stuffthat might not be getting captured in the
report, if I'm just querying my general,records management system that I, I could
be missing that data that's in there.
Yeah, I, I remember Albert Mesa.
(06:50):
When he was on the showand he's dispatcher turned
analyst that he went, he knew.
He is like, wait a minute, Iknow that timestamp is there.
It should, it's not coming over.
And he actually went over to the 9 1 1center and said, okay, where is this?
We gotta track this.
It was important for thecase that he was working on.
So I do know this is where it's,it's beneficial either to have
(07:13):
that 9 1 1 dispatch or contact.
Mm-hmm.
Or if you do have a Albert Mesa.
In your shop, the one, somebody that wasa former 9 1 1 dispatcher that's gonna
be able to get ahold of some of thisdata, or at least know what to ask for.
'cause I think that's, that's kind halfthe challenge is going to be asking the
right question, either of the vendoror your IT staff to go look for it.
(07:36):
In your system with, with yourRMS cad, do you have a data
dictionary that you can search
You know, that's a great question.
We've kind of bouncedback and forth mm-hmm.
Between when we switched over toa new one and then kind of, kind
of went back with the old one.
I'm sure there's still something that,that exists that I should probably double
check and, and see that that is out there.
(07:58):
Mm-hmm.
But kind of like you said,utilizing those types of resources.
I'm also very lucky you mentionedAlbert, but my wife was also a former
dispatcher, so now it was for adifferent agency, but she still knew
those whole, back roads and, and thingsof that nature of how that data goes.
So even being able to.
Pick her brain on some of this stuff too.
(08:19):
But finding someone over thereand just being like, Hey, here's
what I want to get and, and here'swhat I'm looking to do with it.
Does that already exist or dowe need to create something?
And like you said, getting some type ofreference of most of these places have
some type of a key or data dictionarylike you said, that will explain a
lot easier as far as like, this iswhat this field means and this is what
this is and things of that nature.
(08:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Your wife, Brittany Winslow, I thinkshe actually told us some more story.
Yes.
Of what I was justdescribing of, of Albert.
So, yeah, so there's definitely those,the advantage of being a former dispatch
and knowing what questions to answer.
I, I know at my shop we do havea data dictionary for our record
system, and there are times where Isee it in the data dictionary, but
(09:02):
I'm not seeing it in my database.
I have to go request itit to get it populated.
In the database.
'cause they don't actuallybring everything over.
So it's captured in the recordsmanagement system, but it's not
being brought over to the database.
Right.
So that's a, that's another key thingwhen you're, when you're looking at this
stuff, is there may be data that analystsdon't have access to and you never know
(09:25):
when it's gonna be important to your case.
Right.
Or, or just simply if, if you're on theside of doing the type of analysis where
you are calculating like a response times.
Making sure that even though that arrivalfield says arrival and it has a time,
what are, what's, what's arrival mean?
Right?
Mm-hmm.
Does, how does that get calculated?
Does that get calculated when theyqueue up and say, Hey, I've arrived.
(09:49):
Is it geolocated where the.
Their patrol car gets within a certainamount of the, or gets to the address
and it says, okay, they've arrived now.
Different things like that.
And then same thingwith when it's cleared.
If we're trying to see how long arethey staying on these calls, well
how are we clearing those calls?
What is, what is it thatthat goes into that process?
So it just, anything havingto do with data, you know.
(10:12):
Getting to the people that delve init all the time and asking some of
those questions, so then you betterunderstand it, you know, once, once
you've been doing this for a while.
I, I always kind of joke with it,like, I feel like as an analyst you can
analyze pretty much any data once youkind of get in and, and get used to it.
But you need to know whatthe data is and how it works.
Once you get in, then all the samestuff applies the data's data.
(10:34):
Mm-hmm.
So you just need to knowwhat those ins and outs are.
With the field interview, Ithink we called 'em fur cards.
Yeah.
Department.
I was at fur cards fieldinterview report cards.
What was some hidden, datathat you found in that data.
So same, same kind of thing, you know,in terms of if I, if I'm researching
into a suspect or a subject finding otheridentifiers in terms of phone numbers I
(10:58):
mean, if they, I don't know, they givean email in the, in that situation,
but you could have something like that.
Even the narrative itself, in termsof the circumstances of the contact,
if, if I'm not looking, if I'm lookingover that stuff and only relying
on reports there could be other.
Potential I sometimes crimes.
I, I, I can tell you I've readplenty of, of those field info cards
(11:19):
and went, okay, there's a crimethat occurred here and they didn't
actually like do a report for that.
Mm-hmm.
And so you might find other, you know,linkage of other cases by going through
and, and making sure that you're readingthat, those, those types of reports too.
Yeah.
Well, no, I mean, if you had a majorcrime in a, on a particular street, yeah.
You, you might be might beable to identify some potential
(11:41):
witnesses that were part of acar stop or a field interview.
You know that it's onlylike a block or two away.
Exactly.
So.
Yeah, you kinda never know that if Iwas thinking, you know, and depending
on the, the, the data entry techniquefor the officer in, into those,
like, you know, back, back in theday, everything was written by, by
hand, so you really didn't capture a.
(12:02):
State timestamps or Right, or GPScoordinates or anything like that.
But now they got gadgets and gizmostablets and cell phones and all, all that
other stuff, capturing this information.
So all of that.
Should have GPS coordinates shouldhave timestamp information as, as the
officer is filling out the fur card.
(12:24):
Yeah,
exactly.
So you just jumping in and, and,and reviewing all that stuff.
You might see people get mentioned inthose as well, that they don't then
list a, that person in the name record.
So if you were to search.
That person's name in yourrecords, it's not gonna come up.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
But they get named in thatreport and you're only gonna
see that by going through andactually seeing that narrative.
(12:45):
What other things have you found interms of might have some hidden data?
So, the, the biggest one nowadays, it'slike my new favorite, and I say new
'cause it's not new, it's been aroundfor a long time, is, is body cameras.
The body-worn camerafootage is an absolute.
I said goldmine before, but, butwe'll call it the Diamond Mind or
anything about that because it isso rich and heavy in information.
(13:10):
Mm-hmm.
And it's kind of funny watching itevolve over the course of my career.
Right.
Because, like, when I first started,not to date myself too much now,
but it, it's coming that way.
We didn't have body cams, right?
That wasn't a thing.
And in fact, our department was oneof the first ones that jumped on.
'cause Axon is, is, ishoused in Scottsdale.
Their headquarters is here.
And they weren't even calledAxon and they were called Taser.
(13:31):
And they were getting into that body camfield and, and we kind of tested it out
and now, . Even an agency with only twoofficers have body cams, it's become kind
of the standard and needs to be there.
Mm-hmm.
And I will say the one thing that,that it has kind of degraded or brought
down is the quality of report writing.
Mm-hmm.
(13:51):
I think there's a big reliance on.
Footage.
And so there's a lot of things that getmore kind of summarized in a report that
used to be a lot more detail oriented.
To me, if I'm working on a case andI'm, I'm looking into a particular
individual, I'm gonna go in and thefirst thing I'm doing when I'm starting
my first process is I'm going andwatching that footage and, and seeing
(14:12):
what kind of stuff I can glean from it.
And then as I'm doing the research.
Being able to see whatother people are involved.
Right.
So again, using the, if I'm tryingto locate a suspect, we just went out
to that house a week before, well, acouple things we're gonna get there.
One where you can put them ator in that address potentially
stating, yes, I lived here.
I've lived here for thepast X amount of years.
(14:34):
You could get easy things in termsof, from an officer safety standpoint.
You know them if they walk in thehouse, now you have a whole view
of the inside of the house and whatit looks like in its current state.
Mm-hmm.
That could be super helpful as opposed tolooking at, say, just a satellite image
or, they drove by and took camera of it.
So, you know, when you're, they,they walk in and there's a huge
(14:56):
like samurai sword on the wallthat's right there by the door.
And you're like, and Isay, I use that example.
'cause we've had that that might be a goodthing to, to put in your workup right?
When you're saying, Hey, just soyou know, there's a huge sword
that's off to the side of thisdoor when he's gonna answer it.
Different things like that.
So like hidden data in, in that regard.
That's not actual like data, right?
(15:16):
It's not your traditional datawhere it is something tangible
where you can query and, and use it.
It is, it's more observational.
With the body cam footage, therecording, obviously you're,
you're able to review the video.
You, you mentioned searchable.
Does your system or whatyou worked with, deliver
(15:37):
the transcription of, of what it is.
'cause obviously the speech to texttechnology in combination with the
body cam technology has grown and,and developed immensely over our time.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, and that's a great pointis you were correct in that
it is auto transcribing now.
Yeah.
Where you can go into it andsee the whole conversation.
(16:00):
You could query out.
So it does actually makethat data searchable.
Mm-hmm.
In a different way where you could searchfor keywords and it's gonna pop up in the,
that conversation of that specific part.
Or you can, you can actually clickon the word and it'll jump you.
To that part of the conversation.
So the technology is, is crazy in termsof, of that, that side of the house.
(16:20):
And that's a great point.
I will say something else that just kindof hit when I've talked about this before
in, viewing and getting access to thatdata is getting access to that data.
Mm-hmm.
We even had, some hurdles initially toget access to, to view that footage.
And there were, you know, some peoplethat thought that as the analyst,
that we didn't need to view that datathat it wasn't gonna help at all.
(16:45):
And I had a detective that was verymuch the opposite opinion of that,
and was able to get us some access.
In a particular case, and Iwas able to actually go through
that and realize that one of theguys was misidentifying himself.
'cause as I went through it, I waslike, Hey, that he's saying that's
his name, but that's not who that is.
(17:06):
And nobody knew that until I. Sawthat going through the data, and then
that kind of helped to give a goodspringboard of like, Hey, this is why
it's important to have the people thatare deep diving into this data and these
people to be able to review this stuffbecause we're gonna find things or see
stuff that happens in it that maybeyour case detective doesn't even know.
So when you said.
He was misidentify himself.
(17:27):
You're talking about the suspector the civilian that, that's on
the, that's on the camera, right?
Yeah.
The suspect in this case was he,
he was giving a he was usinghis brother's name and date of
birth and it was very close.
They, they were close in age and so.
They didn't verify, they weren'table to verify that at the time.
And, but once I was looking intothis group, I was like, hang
(17:48):
on, that's the guy's brother.
That's not him.
And so that, that helpedwith that later on.
Yeah.
Where my head was going.
I thought the officermisidentified himself.
I was like, well, no wonder theydon't want you looking at footage.
No, no, nothing, nothing like that.
You know?
And the other thing too is if,if people are getting pushback
on that one of the things.
To that point, this stuff is alllogged and , there's systems in place.
(18:12):
If I go in today and go in and reviewfootage, it says I looked at it.
You can audit that and it can show that.
Right.
So I know just like any other parts ofdata, like there's certain things you
making sure that you're staying withinpolicy of am I. Able to view this.
Am I allowed to view this?
I know e even some of the otherones, depending on what you
(18:32):
use, they can lock down certain.
Footage and only make it, availableto supervisors or, specific people.
So there's safeguards in place.
It's not like this free for all.
Once I get in, I'm like, oh man, I'mgonna go look at all this crazy stuff.
Like, I don't have time to do that, man.
I gotta do all these other things.
I, can't just go watchevery, contact that we have.
(18:53):
Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's a lot.
And.
Your system.
, How long do, they keep that footage?
What's the time limit on that?
So the, like, the quick and likepull it up now and view it mm-hmm.
Is about, is usually a year.
Oh, okay.
For most cases.
But then what happens isit doesn't ever go away.
(19:13):
It gets archived after that.
Okay.
So then if you pull upsomething from older.
You can, , basically request thearchive and it'll, it'll pull that out
from the archive so you can view it.
I don't know.
I know there still isa retention schedule.
Like we, we couldn'tkeep all of that forever.
Right.
Video Yeah.
Takes up a ton.
Yeah.
And I think it depends on the, onthe case and the type of case as
(19:35):
to why they keep that part of it.
But then they can also download that.
Then store it somewhere else and thenit wouldn't get caught up in that type
of retention when it comes to that part.
But that's like a, I'm, I'm speakinga little out of my field on that.
That's more of like a records typething in terms of 'cause they also
are the ones that are going throughlater when the news and other
(19:57):
things like that request that info.
Mm-hmm.
They're doing all the redactions whereit blurs out faces and, and other things
like that, that we have people that.
That's one of their main jobsis to go through and, and redact
just like these do in reports.
Right.
And take out the sensitive data.
Sure.
They gotta do the same thing with thevideo too, and kind of scrub through
that and make sure that it's it'sbeing the people's information's being.
(20:20):
Yeah, man.
Geez.
Oh, you're gonna need the crypto stylewarehouse to keep all this information.
I know, right?
All right.
So do you get a, good exampleof some of this hidden data
that we've been talking about?
Yeah,
actually I have
a, a great example that literallyjust happened a week ago for a,
a homicide case that we just had.
And as I was doing my research andgoing through some of the stuff
(20:44):
on this case one of our suspects Ifound had called in a theft report of
his cell phone and the phone numberthat he called in on with that was.
Not the phone number that I hadalready found associated to him.
And at the time we were still lookingfor some other co-conspirators
or, or suspects, if you will.
(21:05):
And so I started to kind of run with thatnumber and I started looking into it.
I find a potential subject related tothat number, and so I'm thinking, Hey,
this could be somebody worth, looking at.
I pull up , the body camerafootage from that theft report.
And lo and behold it is one of the two ofthe other guys actually that we're looking
(21:25):
for, that are with our suspect, or oursuspect in this in the theft of his phone
that we can see clear as day and diggingin and, and looking through social media.
This individual who I found thenumber associated to when I found
his social media he had posted astory the night of our incident that
put them all together as well at alocation that we didn't know about.
(21:48):
So it added in and, and kind ofall grew off of literally digging
into that part of data on a phonenumber from a CAD system That then
gave me a, a positive identificationon a couple other people and then.
Led to a social media account that thengave us some, some evidence that we
ended up using for that that evening.
So all those little thingsended up into like one kind
(22:09):
of big thing of, information.
Yeah, I, I'm, and I might bedating myself 'cause obviously
when you look at CAD information.
It's gonna give you the type of call.
It's gonna give you theday and time, an address.
I don't know if innately in theCAD system, for analyst, if you're
gonna get the phone number thatactually made the call, that might
(22:32):
be something you have to ask for.
Yeah.
Well, and it kind of depends.
So I know like for us, , we havea software discover through Corona
Solutions that gives us a kindof a, a search tool for our cad.
And so if I'm looking through and I putin a phone number or I put in a subject,
I can see those, that information.
(22:52):
Or on the other end, if I'm searchingfor a subject through our records
management for a report, right?
It's gonna be tied to an event number inour cad, I can go run that and actually
pull up the call notes and then seewhat, what exactly was going on as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So sometimes it's extra extensions.
Sometimes you might have to, likeyou said, get in with someone.
(23:13):
In the CAD data world there, that theymay already have something that exists.
I know for that tool they weren'tthinking about using it for investigative,
but I use it all the time for that.
Mm-hmm.
No, that's a, that's a good point.
It it, I was smiling there and thinkingabout, like, we always joked around
if we could get the CAD data fromthe big pizza joint in the city.
(23:36):
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
That has, that has to have so muchgood information in terms of address.
Oh man.
You get names, phone number,
which I mean, you could usewhatever name you want, right?
Yeah.
But I would think most people Iknow still use their real name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We always joked around about that.
I was like, man, if we couldget that data, we probably
could identify a lot of folks.
(23:57):
Yeah, definitely.
Very, very good.
All right, so let's just wrap this up.
Like the title of this series is,fill in the blank, did you know,
Did you know there's
more data than you think that's out there.
Good.
All right, Mike, as always appreciate it.
For those listeners, if you havea good example of some hidden data
(24:20):
leave a comment in on social media.
You can always email me atlea podcasts@gmail.com and.
We will put links to additionalinformation in the show notes and
ways to contact both Mike and I.All right, Mike, thank you so much.
Any last words?
No, man.
Thank you.
This has, this has been fun.
I always
enjoy catching up with you onthese and, and hopefully, people
(24:43):
are getting something out of this.
And kinda like you said,give us some feedback.
If, if there's any topics you want us totalk about or if there's anything that you
found useful, it's always good to know.
I I always like to hear that stuff.
All right.
Did you know with Mike Winslow?
All right.
Thank you and take care bud.
Thanks, man.
Thank you for making it tothe end of another episode of
Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.
You can show your support by sharingthis in other episodes found on
(25:06):
our website@www.podcasts.com.
If you have a topic you would likeus to cover or have a suggestion for
our next guest, please send us anemail at Elliot podcasts@gmail.com.
Till next time, analysts, keep talking.
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