On 19-20^th of May, 2022, Klaipėda County Police Headquarters organized a seminar “Practical aspects of video surveillance technologies in law enforcement”, where various video surveillance, detection and recognition technologies were introduced, as well as ethical and legal issues related to the use and adaptation of these technologies in law enforcement.

Klaipėda welcomed representatives of project SCAPE II LLI-451 “The Development of Safety Services by Strengthening Communication and Cooperation Capacity Between the Local Government and Police Authorities”) partner institutions – Palanga City Municipality Administration, Liepaja Municipal Police, State Police of Latvia and Klaipėda County Police Headquarters. More so, participants from Lithuanian police innovation group (officers, experts and executives of various Lithuanian police institutions) joined the event remotely via Teams platform, it was available for viewing throughout the whole first day of the event.

At the seminar, seven speakers presented various technologies and projects under development. Product manager V. Pranckėnas presented the facial recognition and video analytics software developed by „Neurotechnology“ Ltd. Technical sales of „ELKO Group” Ltd., K. Nagys, introduced the company’s video surveillance, analytic and cyber security products for law enforcement. E. Visockas, chief specialist of the Police department under the Ministry of Interior, Performance Analysis and Control Board, spoke about the latest law enforcement measures in the fight against crime and terrorism developed by the DARLENE project, funded by the European Commission under the HORIZON2020 program. The project develops innovative augmented reality tools to improve situational awareness in response to criminal and terrorist activities. D. Rentelis, technology manager and robotics engineer of “Codami.tech” Ltd. Presented the technological solutions developed by the company for real-time object detection and suspect car detection. Ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of facial recognition technologies were presented by R. Matulionytė, Senior Lecturer of Bachelor of Laws, Macquarie University, Australia. She presented the research carried out together with partners all over the world and the team of researchers of the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Center for Social Sciences – the project “VeidAI”, which investigates ethical and legal risks of the use of facial recognition technologies in law enforcement and the Lithuanian public sector. Šarūnas Prokopimas, director of “GeoNovus” Ltd., introduced the audience to 3D data collection technologies and applications – drones, terrestrial and mobile 3D scanners. The first day’s program was completed by Bryce Adams, a “Trimble” Forensics Department representative from the United States, who introduced the company’s forensic technology and software for law enforcement.

On the second day of the seminar, project partners worked on building cooperation and communication capacity by participating in an interactive activity – orientation game. Mixed teams searched for places hidden in clues and puzzles, made their own routes. This activity, highly dependent on teamwork and distribution of roles, developed information analysis and effective communication skills of participants.

On 31^st of May, 2022, a final meeting of project management team took place in Liepaja, hosted by the State Police of Latvia Kurzeme Region Department. Partners presented and discussed overview of the project finances, goals and tasks reached so far, problems and mistakes made, positive experiences. Final steps to conclude the project were agreed upon, also some ideas and date for the final conference of the project was shortly discussed. Project partners expressed their will to continue cooperation through the Projects in the future and shared some ideas which common needs could be addressed.