CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Local law enforcement from multiple municipalities gathered in Orange on Thursday to meet with five different vendors and discuss their policing products, as well as new technological advancements in law enforcement as a whole.

The event was organized by the Town of Orange and attended by law enforcement from Orange County, Gordonsville, Madison County, Spotsylvania and Commonwealth’s Attorneys of Orange and Culpeper. The idea for the event began when Orange Town Manager Chris Snider contacted Scott Landman, CEO of Charlottesville-based file-sharing company Common Caches.

After Orange started using Common Caches’ services last month, Landman told Cville Right Now he offered to reach out to other companies that may provide a good fit and do a demo day for the police department. Orange Police Chief Rebecca Nelson then invited other agencies her department frequently worked with to attend as well.

“It wasn’t some plan from the beginning,” Landman said of the event.
”It was, ‘Let’s do a demo for the chief,’ and the chief and Chris invited everyone else.”

The event not only provided vendors an opportunity to showcase their products to local law enforcement, but it also gave officers and other local officials a chance to discuss their issues and what they were looking for.

The conversation primarily centered around data storage, better ways to communicate and send data between localities and how Artificial Intelligence is being used to make officers’ task more efficient. Landman said these are topics that come up in every conversation he has with law enforcement about his products.

“That transition, as everyone already said, that’s difficult,” he said. “People are used to doing things the way they’re doing it. They realize they’ve got to make some changes, but in practice, it’s not as easy. 
So, a room like this, where it’s a lot of information and easily absorbed. We’ve been hearing it’s just a very helpful kind of situation.”

The event was also attended by reps from GovSmart, a company focuses on assisting government agencies in purchasing its IT equipment while prioritizing cost efficiency, Case Crackers, which sells equipment for recording interviews, PoliceReports.ai, which utilizes AI for police reports and other administrative tasks, and Case Guard, which sells redaction software utilizing AI.

Orange County Sheriff Jason Smith was among the neighboring law enforcement in attendance for the event. He told Cville Right Now afterward that sharing information and collaborating agencies, including non-law enforcement agencies like mental health agencies and others, is a key part of his work.

“We’re trying to figure out a way that we can collaborate, to be able to share,” he said, “because the folks that maybe live in Orange County also travel or work in other localities surrounding us. And some of the events that occur, we need to be able to share that information on each other.”

While Smith said he believes his agency is in a good spot with their current technology, he thinks Thursday’s event will “open up the conversation for us and especially the town of Orange and town of Gordonsville on how we can better work together and share information, because essentially we were all this one community.”

For Landman, he said the event not only provided an opportunity to potentially sell his service to other local agencies, but it also allowed him and his fellow vendors to hear directly from the law enforcement their products serve.

“Anytime you can sit with customers and get them to speak honestly about what they care about, it provides input to a vendor that really enforces what it is that we do, how we do it, what we build,” he said, “and it really gives you an insight into what their concerns are that you can’t get unless you’re in the room with them.”

Overall, he said the event went great and there are already plans in place for another, as the digital shift continues in law enforcement across the board.

“Small agencies need to reconsider their digital workforce,” he said. “That’s happening everywhere. So the fact that it seems to have landed so well here and they’re staying here, you know, a couple hours … just to us means, ‘Wow, this really did land well.'”