Polycom video helps Virginia Supreme Court ensure due process, bolster public safety, and save money

Virginia is one of a handful of states in the nation that employs judicial officers - magistrates - to issue a warrant for every arrest that's made. Every sheriff's deputy and police officer must immediately transport any person arrested to the magistrate's location and wait while it's determined whether probable cause exists for an arrest warrant to be issued. This takes law enforcement officers off the streets and away from their jobs of safeguarding the public.

Looking for a remedy to the situation, the Virginia Supreme Court Department of Judicial Information Technology identified video conferencing as a solution.

In the city of Richmond, VA, the use of video conferencing has decreased the overall time for officers to have a probable cause hearing from more than one hour down to 20 minutes.

The Right Products

The Supreme Court IT staff has deployed Polycom video conferencing solutions at more than 300 facilities throughout the state. These systems include Polycom's award-winning VSX^TM family of solutions, which offer exceptional voice and video quality. For mixed IP and ISDN and multipoint calls, the organization uses Polycom's MGC^TM-100 bridge.

Virginia law enforcement agencies have embraced the technology solutions, with 300,000 of the state's 1.1 million warrants issued over video, an average of 820 per day. One Virginia city deployed 13 Polycom video conferencing units and estimates that in the first year alone it saved $1.2 million dollars in deputy overtime.