The Secret to Undercover Policing Revealed

ABM unveils new software to support undercover policing and Technical Support Units

Nottingham, 11 May 2011 - Intelligence, investigation and criminal justice software solutions specialist, ABM, has revealed the latest additions to its covert policing and intelligence suite to help police forces improve efficiency, ensure regulatory compliance and save money in the complicated area of covert operations. abmpegasus Undercover helps police forces to manage undercover operations and operatives within the boundaries of the law, whilst abmpegasus Technical Support Unit helps Technical Support Units (TSUs) to manage surveillance equipment and other crucial technical support resources.

The recent high profile case of undercover operative Mark Kennedy and his involvement with the environmental activists behind the Ratcliffe-on-Soar protest in 2009, highlighted the need for effective management of undercover operatives. ABM’s new module, abmpegasus Undercover, improves management oversight of operatives’ activities by providing a secure central record of their operations and crucial background information. The system also allows intelligence gathered from undercover operations to be sanitised and used as Force-wide intelligence, maximising the benefit of undercover operations.

TSUs play an important role in supporting surveillance operations but they have to ensure that equipment is properly maintained and that all operations are conducted within the confines of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000. Inadvertent non-compliant surveillance can have potentially damaging consequences, including loss of public confidence and abandonment of criminal cases. abmpegasus TSU ensures that the unit is alerted to the expiration of any surveillance authorisation so that the risk of breaching the Act is limited.

Anton Roe, Director of Operations at ABM, said “15 years of working closely with UK police forces has helped us to develop a crucial tool for tackling serious and organised crime. Currently, police forces are using a range of paper-based or basic electronic systems for managing the complicated areas of undercover operations and TSUs. By extending the functionality of abmpegasus, virtually all covert activity can now be managed using the abmpegasus suite which has the potential to dramatically improve the way these areas are managed.”

As well as helping individual police forces, abmpegasus TSU and abmpegasus Undercover are compatible with regionalised operations. By sharing undercover and TSU resources, police forces can realise significant cost savings and efficiency improvements. The new abmpegasus modules can help to overcome one of the major barriers to regionalisation by improving communication between shared resources.

Addressing the Police Superintendents Association on 9th May 2011, Home Secretary Theresa May highlighted the need to streamline bureaucracy in order to save time and money. abmpegasus supports the initiative to get eliminate the “grinding bureaucracy that wears officers down” by making it easier and quicker to complete, submit and approve necessary forms and retrieve records.

Roe concludes, “Police forces and government are seeking to improve efficiency and cut costs whilst maintaining the ability to fight crime. In the current difficult circumstances that police forces find themselves in, these two new modules offer a solution to part of this challenge”.

The addition of the Undercover and TSU modules makes abmpegasus the most comprehensive covert operations management software suite available anywhere in the world. More details can be found at http://www.abmsoftware.com/abmpegasus

Read more about abmpegasus Undercover and abmpegasus TSU