What I found when we looked closer
Hialeah is the second-largest city in Miami-Dade County and the sixth-largest in Florida, with 223,109 residents packed into roughly 22 square miles. U.S. Census figures show 89.5% of residents speak Spanish at home, and the city has the highest share of Cuban and Cuban-American residents of any city in the country.
That means a large share of interviews, witness statements, and on-scene conversations happen in Spanish, while the written report that goes to supervisors, prosecutors, and courts is in English. Officers end up translating from memory and from footage, which is slow and leaves room for a quote to drift from what was actually said.
Following one report through the building
The first thing we do with a new department is trace where a report goes after the officer hits submit. Here, it passes through 4 hands:
- 1Patrol officer
- 2Supervisor
- 3Detectives
- 4Prosecutor and court
Every one of those readers needs the same facts from the first draft. That is what shaped what we built.
What we built for them
89.5% of Hialeah residents speak Spanish at home. Report drafts from footage in 40+ languages, so a Spanish-language statement lands in the English narrative with its source clip attached.
Detectives can search transcripts in either language instead of re-watching an interview to find one quote.
In a city of 223,109 on about 22 square miles, footage is full of bystanders. Redact makes release reviewable before anything leaves the department.
What we're watching
These are the signals that will tell us whether it's working here:
- Time officers spend translating statements by hand
- Quotes corrected during supervisor review
- Same-shift report completion
Figures on this page come from the department's own published materials. We only publish Code Four results after the department reviews them.
