Just hours after attending ForceMetrics training, a detective at a Police Department in Washington state found himself relying on the platform to help him find the suspect of an attempted homicide. A woman had been shot in the face, and officers were scrambling to gather suspect information while securing the scene. The situation was rapidly evolving, and as with many violent crimes, the first few minutes were critical.

While en route, the detective received additional information from an officer already on scene. Witnesses had provided a partial description of the suspect, including visible gang-affiliation tattoos covering the suspect’s neck.

Traditionally, that kind of lead can take time to operationalize. Detectives might begin manually checking prior reports, reaching out to gang units, contacting neighboring jurisdictions, or relying on personal memory and fragmented databases. Instead, the detective opened ForceMetrics Velocity on his phone, entered the tattoo descriptors and filtered for known gang associations within the surrounding area, and within seconds, the platform surfaced potential matches with relevant history.

The Velocity Impact

Instead of beginning the investigation with a blank page, the detective was driving toward the crime scene with actionable insights already in hand, allowing him to immediately begin focusing resources and validating information.

Later, the detective reflected on how surprising the experience had been. What stood out to him was not only the power of the data itself, but how naturally the platform fit into the realities of field work, “Only police officers know borders, data transcends them,” he said. In this case, Velocity did more than accelerate a search. It changed the starting point of the investigation itself.