Flashlight shines a light on policing innovation 🔦

Congratulations to everyone who took part in Flashlight, a frontline innovation competition. It was run by the Police Superintendents' Association (PSA) with SEBP, the Open University, Accenture and AWS.

The final took place at the PSA Annual Conference on 14–15 September. Five finalist teams pitched ideas that started on the front line and were turned into working prototypes with support from Accenture and AWS. A panel of senior policing leaders judged the pitches, and the audience in the room had a vote too.

"We were overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of applications we received," said Sara Crane, PSA Vice President.

🏆 Winner: Project GERDA - Accelerating child victim identification through responsible technology

by ACC Lee Berry (National Police Air Service) and Chief Inspector Dan Tillett (West Yorkshire Police)

The winning team now has the chance to build GERDA into a working system with AWS and Accenture.

Highly commended

• TRACE (Traceable Retrieval and Citation Engine): DC Andrew Cartwright and DI Tony Forster, North East Regional Organised Crime Unit

• Cross-force crime detection through tech-enabled biometric intelligence sharing: A/DI Raymond Sekalongo, Metropolitan Police

• Image transcription, categorisation and summarisation: Suzie Kettridge, Senior Technologist, Metropolitan Police

• Project Daedalus (Solving the problem with problem solving): Supt Alex House and Dan James, Bedfordshire Police

  
  

SEBP helped find and sift ideas across the country. We're proud to have been part of a programme that puts officers' own ideas, tested against evidence, at the heart of innovation. Well done to every team.

👉 Read the full story on the PSA website