Bruce-Waterman-FCGreene County Investigator Earns Telmate Hero Award for Technology Innovation

MARCH 8, 2017 GREENE COUNTY (SPRINGFIELD), MO –  Today Telmate, a leader in inmate communications, recognizes Prosecutor Investigator Bruce Waterman of the Greene County Prosecutor’s Office and as the company’s first Telmate Heroes Award recipient for 2017. The Telmate Heroes Award recognizes exemplary performance in the field of law enforcement and corrections, combined with the use of innovative technologies.

In his current role, Investigator Waterman and another investigator work on the criminal side of the prosecutor’s office, assisting twenty-five attorneys in case preparation. Whether it’s tracking down witnesses, or listening to jail calls and trying to make cases against suspects, he often relies on the technology of Telmate Investigator, a suite of advanced investigator tools attached to the Greene County Jail’s phone, video visit and messaging system to strategize and attack crime. Waterman, who’s been with the prosecutor’s office for almost eight years, transitioned into his current role after a 25-year stint with the Springfield Police Department.

“When I first came here, we weren’t taking advantage of accessing these phone records,”  said Waterman. “But over the years Telmate’s technology has improved so much that we routinely utilize it in a variety of ways here in our office.”

According to Waterman, Telmate gives them the ability to check for communication that inmates are having with victims, or with their own family members who they’re asking to tamper with victims. “Now that they’re using the tablets to do the messaging, that’s just another area that we look for. Ninety percent of the time it’s a call that we’re using as evidence, but on some occasions we’ve used the text messages they’re sending.”

With Telmate Investigator, Waterman says it only takes him minutes to lookup an inmate, listen to their calls and know their friends, family, affiliates, and co-conspirators. “We used to spend hours guessing but now it’s easy to use the Telmate software I have on my desktop to search by a variety of things, whether it be the number, inmate number or the inmate name.”

Waterman believes empowering his investigative team with cutting-edge technology not only ensures their own success but also gives Greene County citizens a premium law enforcement service. In Waterman’s words, “We have used recorded calls on numerous occasions to play for jury members and judges and those calls have assisted this office in obtaining convictions and fair sentences.

Investigator Waterman is a family man who says his wife is a hero because she has a much tougher job than fighting crime every day: She babysits their four grandsons and keeps them in line.

The Telmate vision is to create secure technology that empowers inmates to break the cycle of recidivism, while protecting and serving facilities and their communities. For more information about the Telmate Heroes program or to nominate your own hero, please visit www.telmate.com/heroes.

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Telmate is a leading provider of secure corrections and community corrections solutions including phone, tablet, visitation, messaging, education and entertainment content, corrections applications, investigator tools and GPS monitoring. Telmate’s cutting-edge platforms are deployed in over 300 correctional facilities in the U.S. and Canada. Telmate is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an employee presence nationwide. To find out more about Telmate, visit www.telmate.com.