Email address: Bdavis@forensiclogic.com
Company name: Forensic Logic COPLINK
Your name and title: Brad Davis, CEO
Signature Product: LEAP Search
Website: https://forensiclogic.com/
1. Where did your company name originate from?
“Forensic” relates to scientific precision, “Logic” relates to decision making. Our company is built around effectively using data to drive accurate decision making, both tactical and strategic.
2. What was the inspiration behind starting your company?
On 9/11 the nation awoke to the reality that the information landscape in American law enforcement was in terrible shape. Our company’s founders set out to change the way that law enforcement accessed their information, moving away from antiquated, big-contractor approaches to a more nimble, powerful, Silicon-Valley model. We felt law enforcement deserved the same caliber of technological capability that the rest of the world enjoyed, and Forensic Logic was born.
3. What is your signature product and how does it work?
Our signature product is LEAP Search – a search engine optimized for law enforcement. Search engines are very powerful mechanisms to allow human beings to enter in what we are thinking and retrieve the key piece of information we are looking for from a vast universe of data. They are the most powerful, scalable bridge anyone has yet built between the digital universe and the human mind. Unfortunately, traditional search engines don’t handle law enforcement data very well at all since information is spread among so many document types and different levels of structuring. We created a process by which we can normalize the universe of law enforcement data, and then train and perfect the ranking algorithms through years of user input. The result is a search engine that enables an officer to enter in what they are thinking in plain speech and let our servers deliver the key piece of information to help that officer crack the case and better understand his or her environment.
4. Why do you believe your products are essential to your vertical (Police, Fire, EMS, Corrections, Government) community?
The decisions police must make are often life-or-death, and therefore must be based on the best possible information. We’ve built our platform and our company to ensure the right information gets to the officer, easily and every single time.
5. What has been the biggest challenge your company has faced?
For a while, it was difficult to get the rank and file to really demand better solutions from their agency. I experienced the same thing in the military – there’s a sense that technology acquisitions are made up in the stratosphere somewhere, and that the end user doesn’t get to have much say in the decision. No cop would tolerate a pistol that didn’t shoot or a cruiser that wouldn’t start, so it seems crazy to me that our society wouldn’t demand more from the technology that provides them information upon which life or death decisions are made. Over time, we’ve seen a welcome shift in that officers have become more vocal and demanding about their needs – whenever decisions are made based on what works in the field, we tend to do well.
6. What makes your company unique?
The holy grail in law enforcement will always be to access the most information in the easiest possible way, which requires both tremendous innovation and enormous amounts of sensitive agency data. Usually there’s a choice between one or the other – something new and innovative hasn’t earned the trust of the community or the security compliance chops to handle agency data, and older platforms tend to be clunky and of minimal value to the end user. Where we are unique is that we can provide both – we continue to drive into uncharted territories in innovation, now incorporating some of the most advanced AI in the world to continue to push our product forward. With the acquisition of COPLINK, , we can now apply that innovation to the largest network of agency data in the country. To build industry trust and a culture of intense innovation takes many years to accomplish but is necessary to be successful in this field.
7. What do your customers like best about you and your products?
Steve Jobs taught the world that innovation is best presented through simplicity and elegance, not undue complexity. Our customers love that we build such power and simplicity into our products, bringing a universe of data through an interface that is as easy as booking a hotel room. They also know that we are fanatically focused on their mission and their needs – every aspect of our platform has been built from the ground up with the officer in mind, and it shows in what we deploy.
8. What is the most rewarding part of serving the first responder/local government community?
Our system was used to break the case against a human trafficker who had been pimping little girls across several jurisdictions for years. I was in with the DA’s office when the jury returned a guilty verdict, leading to a jail sentence of many, many decades. There is simply no way to describe the feeling of reward that comes in knowing our work helped ensure no other children would be victimized by that person. To innovate with purpose is a source of deep satisfaction and reward.
