While investigating a store break-in and the theft of a storage unit facility, detectives turned to surveillance cameras to piece together critical details. From the footage, they developed a description of the suspects and identified the vehicle used in the crime: a gold Ford Freestyle. However, because of the camera angles, the vehicle’s registration tag remained hidden, and the perpetrators were still unknown.

Determined to find a lead, the detectives utilized ForceMetrics Velocity™ and ran a search for “Ford Freestyle.” The system generated 28 events connected to that vehicle model. Sorting them by date, the detective noticed the most recent incident involved an animal control call reporting two dogs left unattended inside a Ford Freestyle.

This detail immediately caught the detectives' attention. During the break-in, surveillance had shown the perpetrators accompanied by two dogs. Following the lead, they accessed the Evidence tab in Velocity and reviewed the body camera footage of the two responding officers. The video revealed that the vehicle they encountered that day was a gold Ford Freestyle, and the dogs inside matched the description of those seen with the suspects.

Carefully rewatching the footage, the detective observed that the officers made direct contact with the vehicle’s owners. Those individuals, it turned out, were the same perpetrators from the break-in investigation.

Result/Impact:

This discovery was remarkable. The animal control call had never been documented in a formal report, and the only reference to the Ford Freestyle existed in CAD notes entered by a communications operator. Without ForceMetrics, such a query would never have returned results from those notes, leaving the crucial connection undiscovered.

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