During a recent training session with a graveyard shift crew at a local police department in Washington, an unexpected success story unfolded in real time:

As the training was underway, a young officer briefly stepped into the briefing room and shared that he had just used the ForceMetrics Velocity Platform to identify a shoplifting suspect.

The officer had recently responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart, and by the time he arrived, the suspect had already left the scene. The only lead investigators had was a photograph of the suspect, who appeared to be a Native American woman between approximately 45 and 55 years old.

Turning to Velocity, he was able to filter by demographic and age, run a basic search, and find the suspect — who happened to be the very first person profile returned by the search. In just moments, the officer had an identification that could move the investigation forward and allow him to file a theft case.

What made the story even more notable was that the officer had not attended the previous training session two weeks earlier. In fact, he had not been formally trained on the ForceMetrics platform at all. It was just that intuitive.

The Velocity Impact

This story highlights one of the most important impacts ForceMetrics can have in the field: turning limited information into actionable investigative leads.

In this case, an officer had no more than a photograph and a general description. Traditionally, identifying a suspect from that information could require significant time, additional investigative steps, or waiting for other evidence to emerge.

Instead, ForceMetrics gave the officer a way to quickly narrow the search using the information he already had.