For nonprofit organizations · FusionTrace Master Certified

Certification is for law enforcement agencies.Someone has to train them.

The hardest part of camera records is not the technology. It is trust. Law enforcement agencies need records they can use. Communities need to know they will not be misused. FusionTrace Master Certified is for the nonprofit organizations that work alongside law enforcement and train agencies in the Standard. Nonprofit organizations are invited to champion the Standard. They never see a record.

Certification is by invitation through the FusionTrace Academy™. The Steward scores every exam and issues every certificate.

Where every pattern starts

Every pattern an investigator ever finds was first a single incident someone wrote down well, or didn't.

What the Standard does
The Standard is about that first record: preserved, structured and sealed, so it is still trustworthy when it matters.
Why it makes communities safer
The earlier an incident is documented properly, the sooner it can be connected, by the right people, under the right authority.
What a system built to it never does
A system built to the Standard never decides what happened, never labels a person, and never puts a name to anyone from a camera.

Film No. 06

There is no side door.

For nonprofit organizations. What the Standard asks and forbids, and how organizations train law enforcement agencies in it.

Runtime (2 minutes 59 seconds)English captions

Transcript and every film

Why organizations like yours

You are already in the room.

You work alongside law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local level, and they know you. You stand with the people misuse would hurt: when you tell a community that an agency has committed to these rules, the community has reason to listen. And your word carries because you are independent. Certification is never about a product. It is about how people handle records.

There are two tiers. Law enforcement agencies and their investigators become FusionTrace Certified™. The nonprofit organizations that train them become FusionTrace Master Certified. There is no fee for Master Certification. An organization may charge an agency its reasonable, published course costs, never for the exam or a certificate.

What Master Certified asks

  1. Each trainer completes the full administrator path, a trainer module and the trainer examAbout four hours, at least twice the investigator's path. The trainer exam runs 60 minutes, twice the investigator's, supervised live by a proctor on video.
  2. Each teaches back a segment by live videoAt least 45 minutes, assessed by someone who did not train them. No one travels to supervise.
  3. Each co-teaches a first course, and signs the attestation to the FusionTrace™ Canons.The Academy's Chief Instructor co-teaches each new organization's first course, joining by live video.
  4. The head of your organization signs a trainer commitmentAnd names one person who answers for it. The organization has at least one Master Certified trainer. An organization and its first trainer can complete certification together.

Three terms, three meanings.

Sealed to the FusionTrace Evidence Standard goes on records.

FusionTrace Certified is for law enforcement agencies and investigators.

FusionTrace Master Certified is for the nonprofit organizations that train them. It is a designation in text. There is no Master Certified mark, and the Certified seal is never used for an organization.

Your duty to stay independent

What the trainer commitment protects.

Your independence is the reason law enforcement agencies and communities will listen to you, so the trainer commitment protects it.

  1. Teach the Standard as written.Never soften a rule, and never add one of your own. Questions the Standard does not answer go to the stewards.
  2. Never endorse a product or a vendor.And never put the Certified seal or the Master Certified name on one.
  3. Say in public any relationship you have with a company whose system seals to the Standard.
  4. Never vouch for an agency for who it is.Only for what its people completed.
  5. Never ask for, receive or keep case contents.Nonprofit organizations never see a record.
  6. You teach. You do not score the exam, and you do not issue the certificate.That separation keeps you out of the middle. The Standard is stewarded by Stephen Pales and Jim Cords, co-founders of BlueWave Technology, Inc., which builds software to it. Any vendor may build to the Standard, and every implementation, the first included, is held to the same rules.

When something goes wrong

If you learn of misuse by any certified law enforcement agency, you report it, to the agency's administrator or to the stewards, within five business days. You never handle it quietly. You renew each year with a report: counts only, never case contents. A Master Certified organization that breaks its commitment can be suspended or revoked, in public. The agencies you trained keep their own status, because their people earned it themselves. If the training was unsound, their people can be asked to sit the exam again.

In the registry.

Master Certified organizations are listed by name, with their status: Master Certified, Suspended, Revoked or Expired. Individual trainers are never listed.

Governance

Stewardship will pass to an independent board, with a majority independent of any vendor, and with nonprofit organizations, law enforcement, prosecution and civil liberties among the first seats filled. No board exists today, and no date is set.

How to become a training partner

Start the conversation now.

Certification is by invitation through the FusionTrace Academy. If your organization works alongside law enforcement and wants to bring this Standard to the law enforcement agencies you serve, this form reaches a person at the publisher. Nothing you type is placed in a web address. Privacy says what a form sends.

  1. ApplyTell us who you are and which law enforcement agencies you work with.
  2. CommitThe head of your organization signs the trainer commitment and names the person who answers for it.
  3. Complete the master pathYour trainers complete the administrator path and the trainer module, pass the trainer exam, teach back by live video and co-teach a first course.
  4. Be listedYour organization appears in the public registry as Master Certified, and the agencies you trained appear with their own status.