Wilton Valadas Junior, from the judicial and investigative police for the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, explains how the i2 Analyst’s Notebook has raised the level of data analysis undertaken by the enforcement body, making it easier to identify criminal networks and resolve complex cases.
The Civil Police of the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil has used the i2 Analyst’s Notebook to resolve hundreds of criminal investigations since 2005.
The advanced visual analysis software tool has made a fundamental difference to our investigative work because it has allowed us to take large volumes of raw data, often spread across different documents and systems, and organised and presented it visually so it is easier to understand. It has brought greater depth, efficiency and precision to our investigations.
i2 Analyst’s Notebook also allows us to cross reference information sourced from police reports, telephone data, InfoSet Queries and internal records, accelerating the analysis and reducing the investigation’s response time. As a result, the Civil Police’s investigations have been more strategic in their execution and reports produced for the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judiciary have been better informed.
i2 Analyst Notebook has saved considerable time, especially when used for more complex investigations such as crimes that involve multiple persons of interest and data pulled from different sources, for example, telephone records, police reports and vehicle registrations. The time spent analysing data has been reduced by about 40-60%. Whereas it previously took weeks to manually cross-reference information and build investigation lines, this can now be done in days. The tool also provides greater security in the identification of relevant links in complex investigations.
The tool also enables us to undertake a more in-depth analysis of different types of data during these investigations. Both visually and chronologically we can cross-reference the data and identify behavioural patterns, hierarchies in criminal organisations and individual roles during different phases of a criminal activity. To give an example, the Notebook enabled us to successfully track the activities of a group embezzling funds digitally, which would not have been possible using manual methods. Using the tool, we could cross-reference occurrence bulletins from different police stations with bank transition records.
A good example of a criminal case that demonstrates how the i2 Analyst’s Notebook could have sped up the investigation and provided greater clarity in the analysis of data critical to its outcome is the one concerning the disappearance and murder of Eliza Samudio in 2010 and the involvement of goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza. The incident is the subject of the true-crime documentary An Invisible Victim: The Eliza Samudio Case.
At the time of Samudio’s disappearance, the analysis of telephone records was central to the Civil Police investigation’s reconstruction of the steps of those involved. Drawing on call data and the location of cell phone antennas, the police mapped who spoke to whom, where they were and what time. This enabled investigators to generate a precise timeline of everyone’s movements. By cross-referencing telephone data, the Civil Police could confirm the goalkeeper’s involvement and that of people linked to him.
However, with the support of the visual analysis software tool, this case could have been solved quicker. This is because the i2 Analyst’s Notebook allows police to import phone records directly and visually create relationships and time sequences in the temporal view, which all helps the investigator to identify call patterns, common numbers between suspects and suspicious activity at defining moments in an investigation.
For these reasons, complex investigations like the Samudio case now use i2 Analyst’s Notebook to better understand the relationships between people, events, places and objects. With this tool, it is possible to see connections that would previously go unnoticed, especially with investigations that involve large amounts of data, such as telephone records, financial transactions and links between police reports from different cities.