The vast majority of criminal cases, from cybercrimes to traditional crimes like drug trafficking and murder, now involve some sort of digital evidence recovered from smartphones, cloud accounts, and IoT devices. “By one estimate, digital evidence is a factor in about 90% of criminal cases,” according to an article published in Forensic Science International and replicated in the National Institutes of Health.

As law enforcement investigations digitize and their complexity continues to increase, the volume of data managed is also increasing. To keep up with this rapidly changing environment, it is critical to expand the digital investigative capabilities of law enforcement agencies. That’s why digital transformation is happening in so many agencies around the world.

The Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,  is a strong example of an agency that has embraced new technologies, speeding up time to evidence and making criminal investigations more efficient and efficient — ultimately contributing to the reduction of crime rates.

Investing in Technology to Keep People Safe

“We went from an artisanal investigation to a technological investigation,” said police chief Vanessa Pitrez, Director of the Office of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs (GIE) of Rio Grande do Sul. “Today we have a very considerable and robust technological investment in the area of intelligence, which allows us to conduct a qualified investigation with technical evidence that can reliably point to both the perpetrator and provide the diagnosis of the crime you are investigating.”  

This investment in technology has directly led to a reduction in crime because these new solutions allow investigators to analyze much larger volumes of crime-related data more quickly. To ensure that this technology is available throughout the organization, the Civil Police now has more than 40  Cellebrite data extraction devices deployed across all specialized and operational departments in 33 regions.

“Digital investigations give us a much greater degree of assertiveness than traditional investigations,” explained police chief Elbert Moreira Neto – Director of the State Department for the Repression of Cybercrimes (DERCC) of Rio Grande do Sul. “When we start using technological tools, we have an advance in cross-referencing data. And after extraction, the analysis of this data allows us to trace connections between people and reach the perpetrator of homicides that were previously unsolvable.” And because digital evidence is stored in the cloud, it’s always protected. 
 

Police chief João Paulo de Abreu- Director of the State Department of Criminal Investigations (DEIC) of Rio Grande do Sul explains. “When the DEIC headquarters was flooded in May 2024, its facilities were devastated. If all digital evidence had been physically stored on hard drives or other removable devices, it would have been lost, and ongoing investigations would have ceased. Having critical data stored in the cloud, however, allowed investigations to continue and justice to be served.”

The Battle Against Organized Crime

One of the biggest challenges faced by the Civil Police is the fight against organized crime.  “Organized crime reinvents itself; it migrates,” explained Delegate Vanessa Pitrez. “Today you have a criminal organization that operates in one place, but soon it will migrate to another.

“You have drug trafficking as the main axis of the formation of these criminal groups, but there are also weapons and ramifications in the most varied types of crime. And there is also territorial migration. So the analysis… The technology that helps us analyze the information collected, both from cell phone extractions and other devices, and the correlation, the formation of links, allows us to have a macro view of organized crime through these links, monitor criminal organizations and plan the criminal intelligence analysis that we invoke, evolve into operational planning to combat and dismember/demobilize organized crime.”

Training is key

“What we have been seeking today,” explained Chief João Paulo de Abreu, “is that more and more civil police officers who use these tools [need] to fully understand the ability of these solutions to optimize their work. In other words, the training of police officers is extremely important, as they really are extremely robust solutions that require periodic training in this regard.”

Looking to the Future

“I believe and hope that we continue to invest in technology, in intelligence tools, in investigative tools, extraction tools and analysis tools,” said Delegate Vanessa Pitrez. “We were able to work on intelligence, technological development, aid, knowledge production and the reach of this knowledge production [and we put it] at the forefront of criminal investigations. This has contributed a lot to the reduction in crime that we have experienced today in the State of Rio Grande do Sul.”

Seeing these results clearly helps residents, but it has also had a positive impact on police officers across the department. “I think that what moves police officers in general is the possibility of making a difference in people’s lives, promoting security and also contributing to the promotion of justice,” continues the Delegate.  
 
“We deal with a lot of violence, misery and the ills of society. But after you do your job, you feel that sense of accomplishment and that you somehow contributed to the people around you to make them feel more at peace and have a better life.”

Digital technology is helping investigators in Rio Grande do Sul and agencies around the world to make this possible.