Could UK police soon be solving crimes with Microsoft HoloLens?

'We can do some amazing things with the technology' says developer

UK police forces may soon begin using Microsoft's HoloLens augmented reality (AR) hardware as part of an ambitious push to harness cutting-edge technology.

Robert Hogg, founder and MD of custom development and consultancy firm Black Marble, which specialises in Microsoft platforms, explained that his firm "will be delivering HoloLens to [UK police forces] as soon as we can. We can do some amazing things with the technology".

A Microsoft spokesperson later told Computing that, while it's unlikely that members of the forces will go out on the beat wearing the slightly cumbersome devices in the near future, the technology could well be used in the recreation of crime scenes.

Hogg also discussed some other bleeding-edge use cases for Microsoft technology with Cambridgeshire police.

When Computing last spoke to Cambridgeshire Constabulary in 2014, the force was standardising on Windows 8.1, but Hogg explained how Windows 10 is now beginning to work its way into the mix, its shared API set across devices proving a boon for bringing together communication methods.

Hogg, speaking at an event organised by Microsoft in London yesterday, said that in his experience, some forces have failed to achieve the expected benefits when trying to replace paper forms with new technology. He said they found that they had "the same problem - it's just now it's on a tablet".

"[a police officer] said that he was issued a laptop and if it worked - they reckoned it worked every other day - they said it was quicker to drive back to the station and fill out forms by hand," so they'd hand the laptop back in every night, he said.

"Whichever way you look at it, [Cambridgeshire] couldn't have done worse than that," laughed Hogg.

Hogg said was determined to "bring imagination" to Cambridgeshire's modernisation project, to revitalise a force that he felt was "disillusioned with IT".

Beyond merely an "application", Hogg decided it was necessary to build a "complete holistic solution", giving officers on the beat something beyond their current "10 systems, all with different results" each time a search or inquiry was launched.

"We wanted all the systems connected, and officers having access to all things at one time," he said, as well as adding auditing systems for the chief constable and other senior staff members.

Another key aim was to reduce training time to only 15 minutes on the system per officer.

Hogg said one of the biggest breakthroughs with the service's new tech came with the development of its search functionality.

"We made the system search first - rather than filling in a form to find a known criminal, you actually search first and get all the instances from all the back-end systems, and we tie that together," he explained.

"So when we charge people with something, it's updating all the back-end systems with that new information, and we don't have data duplication."

There's also now no need to search a system twice, resulting in a process which, Hogg claimed, "can deliver the same functionality in just over 10 per cent of the time".

Evidence at a crime scene is also photographed into a tablet, which logs a photo's orientation and geographical location.

"This can all be delivered to the court directly, making it a lot more difficult to dispute evidence," said Hogg, who added that "this has cut court preparation down from 140 hours to 10 to 15 minutes of work".

When an officer begins an "event" - for example, running a licence plate through the DVLA database - others can join it, sharing the data and adding their own searches and knowledge to the ongoing inquiry. Chiefs can also see "all the events unfolding in realtime" too, added Hogg.

Finally, wearable device Microsoft Band is also now being utilised in a unique way, in a trial period in Cambridgeshire. If the user's heart rate goes over a certain level, or if it is removed from an officer's wrist, it triggers an alarm and officers will scramble to support their colleague.