-mi
A
Sofiware
System
for Information Extraction
in
Criminal
Justice
Information
Systems
Law enforcement agcncies across the country have enoniious quantities of data that aresiniply not being well utilized. Police reports, affidavits, and various other forms of tcxtualinfor~nation remain an untapped resource because of technological and other barriers. Inaddition, officers, detectives, and investigators do not have time to analyze (or the ability torecall) this wealth of textual infonnation. Furthennore, recognizing links between items of datapresents an even greater problem. Fortunately. new technology is reaching the ~narketplacchatenables lnultitudes of textual docuinents to be scanned and key items of infonnationauto~natically xtracted for use
in
solving crimes.Using one of these technologies known as "infor~llationextraction:" kcy items
of
data I'o~~ndwithin narrative tcxtual can and convcrtcd into ~lscfi~l,oc~~nicnts bc proccsscd scarch;~blcinlbrmation.
r.
leclinically speaking, info~lnation
extraction
is conccl-ncd
\\/it11
thc auhl~n;~r~c:discovery
ol'
pattcrns and relationships in tcxtual data. This type
of'
cutting-cclgc. ~i:illnolo~y\
.;
cxactly what the law
enforcement
community nccds to proccss thc ~tlcalth
01'
la\{,
L'II~~)I.CCIIICIII
inf'onnation. and enhance investigativc efforts.Based on infonnation extraction technology, 1,eIiigli has devclopcd
a
soli\i,ar-csystem niilllcdthe BPI>
-
1E
Syste~n (Bethlehem Police Depart~nent Infoniiation Extraction System)
1I;;it
automatically extracts key items of infbnnatio~l rom narrative textual data and links unsolvedcriminal cases to solvcd cases, providing investigators with valuable leads -1.he
technology
autoinatically obtains
IIIO~US
operandi and physical descriptions from thesc tcxtual documcnts.'Tliis data is then stored into fielded, relational databases which can be easily seal-chcd.Whllc the effort covered in this summary, details the BPD
.-
IE System and the work with the13cthlchcln Policc I>epartment (BPD), tlic application of this syste~n nd its t~cli~~ologyan bcuscd in other dcpart~nentso enhance efforts in law enforceinent.
'The:
BPI>-FE
sub-system. as lncntio~iedearlier, is a convcrsion tool that cxtsacts tcxtualfcatul.es fi-om
our
data sources. These features are then saved in tables
111
thc BIID
IE
Database.
-
BPD
IE
Systc~nusers call search the
extracted
features uslng the user intcrfacc. While the
BPD-FE
sub-system provides several capab~litics, crliaps the most notable 1s batch loading
and
conversion.
Investigators often kecp their textual documcnts
111
a kw
(11'
not olic) dcslgni~tcdfolder
on
t11e1r coniputcr. 'l'lic batch upload funct~on llows thc
LIS~I
o sl~nply
'I
II~IC~IC
pc~.~licf'oldc~..I'hc systc~n utomatically pcrforn~s 'caturc cxtractio~l
nd
clatabasc opcr,ltloll\
OII
,111
1l1c
documcnts located w~thiii he folder.
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