Cops are looking to crowdsource investigations using mobile apps

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings last year, eyewitnesses deluged authorities with uploaded videos and photos, sometimes clogging up servers and perhaps prolonging and hindering the police investigation. Now Amazon Web Services has come to the rescue with virtually endless bandwidth. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has teamed with AWS and others, resulting in an Android and iOS app allowing eyewitnesses to upload footage to the authorities during emergencies. The system, known as the Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository (LEEDIR), is a police tip line on steroids. “When the public really wants to catch these bad guys as badly as we do, this is the mechanism,” Scott Edson, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s commander who was among those who helped develop the system, told The Associated Press. “They can help us by sending us pictures and video.”