Experts predict that humans will soon interact seamlessly with various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily lives, much like humans interact with each other today.1 This exciting development has the potential to revolutionize policing, making it more efficient and effective by incorporating emerging technologies. Embracing AI can significantly enhance productivity, improve service delivery, and play a crucial role in helping the police meet the constantly evolving needs of communities. Police agencies can proactively leverage AI to gain a significant investigative advantage, set new standards, and exceed public expectations.
Creating a Common Goal
The success in integrating AI into police operations is contingent on the support of internal, political, and community stakeholders. Police leaders should take a regional approach to understanding and deploying AI technology with this crucial support. By creating a standardized expectation for AI usage in a region, they can promote transparency and effectively combat crime. For instance, in San Diego County, California, police agencies collaborate to understand trends, share intelligence, and plan emerging technology deployment. This is a valuable model for others deploying AI platforms that can benefit all agencies in a specific region instead of parallel, individual development. As agencies work together, they can boost transparency and public support and create shared plans to seamlessly integrate AI technology to support their region’s police mission.
The Mission and the Guardrails
The central tenet of policing revolves around protecting and enhancing public safety, but not at the cost of community members’ civil rights. AI applications can play a pivotal role in protecting the community, but it is fundamental to note that AI brings potential risks and ethical concerns, such as privacy issues and potential algorithmic bias. Such powerful tools also require thoughtful governance and transparent community engagement. In this context, the role of police leaders is crucial. They must support open discussion with the public, emphasizing transparency, building trust, establishing clear guidelines, and setting standards for how the technology is used. These measures can assure the public that their civil liberties and privacy will be respected even as AI is used to enhance their safety. An emphasis on transparency and community engagement from police leaders will reassure the public and instill confidence in the responsible use of AI.
“Leaders across the globe should discuss how AI could be used as a regional investigative standard, never losing sight of being fully transparent about the AI integration process”
Community engagement is a cornerstone to using AI in policing responsibly. Open dialogues and forums, such as community meetings and town halls, provide a platform for police officials to explain the use of AI for community members to ask questions about its use. When the police interact with a variety of community stakeholders, it allows them to better understand how AI in government agencies can promote the public interest. This engagement also helps us find ways to improve the practices of civil servants tasked with serving the community.2 An overarching message, both to communities and their police, is that adopting AI is necessary if the police hope to keep pace with technologies employed by those intent on harming the public.
AI Plays a Crucial Role in Policing
AI has evolved to the point where it can replicate some human thought processes. Over the past few decades, this evolution has led many police professionals to consider how this technology could streamline their processes, improve efficiency, and ultimately make communities safer. More than 30 years ago, the police began to discover AI’s capacity to analyze vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, detect potential threats, enhance crime prevention, and improve case resolution.3
AI’s first impact on policing was through facial recognition technology to identify subjects in London during the late 1990s.4 It was later perfected for live recognition and is being used throughout the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2002, police in the United Kingdom also conducted one of the earliest trials of AI via automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology, using systems that were primitive compared to today’s advanced technology. The deployment was a great success. Across 13 months, UK police intercepted 180,543 vehicles using ALPR systems, leading to 13,499 arrests. Additionally, they recovered 1,152 stolen cars, seized £380,000 worth of illegal drugs, and recaptured £640,000 of stolen property. The use of ALPR resulted in approximately 10 times more arrests than those made by officers without this technology.5
“The envisioned future is not just about integrating AI into investigations; it is about reimagining policing”
In a more recent example of the potential for intelligent technologies to aid the police, in August 2019, New York City Police Department (NYPD) detectives utilized facial recognition technology to apprehend a man who placed two rice cookers in a subway station that were similar in appearance to the improvised explosives used at the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013. After extracting images of the suspect from surveillance footage, the detectives employed facial recognition software to cross-reference them with the NYPD’s arrest database. The system yielded numerous potential matches, and following extensive review and validation using alternative methods, including manual verification by experienced officers, the suspect was positively identified within a mere hour.6 Interestingly, the devices were not filled with explosives, but the suspect was arrested for charges related to their placement.
Even more recently, the City of San Diego installed 500 ALPR and surveillance cameras in November 2023. In only the first two months of their use, the system assisted in 22 homicide, robbery, burglary, assault, and stolen vehicle cases, resulting in 12 stolen vehicles recovered and 11 suspects arrested in connection to those crimes.7
San Diego’s AI network has since evolved to include even more impactful technologies like audio and video content analysis engines, gunshot detection, drone operations, and forensic analysis, all of which have been successfully deployed. The Chula Vista Police Department in San Diego County broke new ground with their drone as a first responder (DFR) program, where their AI-enabled drones have already completed more than 20,000 drone flights. DFR has become a model for police agencies around the globe, and it has been instrumental in providing critical information to officers on the ground in dangerous situations, with many successful outcomes.8 These are only early examples of the ever-expanding ways AI will soon be integrated into police operations.
AI: The Universal Platform Revolutionizing Investigations
AI will serve as the common thread connecting various police technologies, ultimately leading to the automation of investigative procedures and the creation of digital assistants to aid police professionals. As AI continues to evolve, it will integrate technologies such as facial recognition, ALPR, audio and video content analysis engines, gunshot detection, drone operations, forensic analysis, and report writing and review. The linking of these functions through AI will streamline processes, improve efficiency, and enhance the investigative capabilities of police agencies.9 This integration will pave the way to develop a digital assistant for officers and their agencies that can analyze vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and provide critical information to officers in real time, thus revolutionizing investigations and making the police more effective and responsive.
Tools that can automate police reports based on body-worn camera footage, templates, or voice narration are being piloted by several police agencies and approaching widespread use. Imagine how much time will be saved, how much more complete reports will be, and how officers freed from the report writing room will use that time to police their communities.
“The regional adoption of AI today signifies the onset of a new era in policing”
Investigating case reports is time-consuming, especially when extracting crucial details and reviewing previously reviewed reports. Using emerging tools, case information will be able to be synopsized, with AI platforms suggesting leads or recommendations for detectives. AI could evolve to take it a step further to review cases and identify specific types of evidence, such as images, sentiments, or critical concepts relevant in many cases, aiding investigators and prosecutors in building more robust cases more efficiently.10 A regional approach to AI that encompasses all agencies, including prosecutorial agencies, will normalize the practice and provide opportunities for cases to be reviewed and evaluated through the court system. Although some larger agencies with robust IT capabilities and enough money to pay for testing could do it alone, most police organizations cannot take on the analysis, procurement, and integration of these tools without consuming inordinate time and effort. San Diego’s collaborative approaches can be tailored for use by others to create efficiency in scale and bring AI into their organizations to better protect those they serve.
Conclusion
The future of policing is undeniably intertwined with the rise of AI. Over the next decade, AI is not just expected to redefine how police agencies operate. It can potentially make crime prevention and investigation more precise, timely, and effective. The regional adoption of AI today signifies the onset of a new era in policing, featuring a future characterized by more astute resource allocation, improved interagency collaboration, and enhanced investigative techniques.
Visionary police leaders are embracing AI with an eye to the future. Leaders across the globe should discuss how AI could be used as a regional investigative standard, never losing sight of being fully transparent about the AI integration process. It is crucial to inform communities about how police agencies can make streets safer with AI and instill greater confidence in their capacity to carry out the policing mission. The envisioned future is not just about integrating AI into investigations; it is about reimagining policing, where AI is the cornerstone to shaping safer cities and promulgating more just societies.
Notes:
1Rob Toews, “5 AI Predictions for the Year 2030,” Forbes, March 10, 2024.
2Haque, R., Saxena, D., Weathington, K., Chudzik, J., & Guha, S. (n.d.). Are We Asking the Right Questions?: Designing for Community Stakeholders’ Interactions with AI in Policing. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642738
3Chris Chiancone, “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Law Enforcement,” LinkedIn (post), October 3, 2023.
4Pete Fussey, “Eastern Promise? East London Transformations and the State of Surveillance,” Information Polity 17, no. 1 (January 2012): 21–34.
5Tim Dees, “Research Review: Identifying the Benefits of ALPR Systems,” Police1, November 4, 2019.
6Craig McCarthy, “How NYPD’s Facial Recognition Software ID’ed Subway Rice Cooker Kook,” New York Post, August 25, 2019.
7“Tech-Driven Crime Reduction: San Diego Sees Results from Smart Streetlight and ALPR Systems,” Police1, February 24, 2024.
8CBS 8 San Diego, “Chula Vista Marks Milestone with 20K Drone Flights,” YouTube video, 2:53, July 19, 2024.
9 Marcelo Blanco, “Virtual Assistants in Blue: The Rise of the Machines in Policing,” Police1, March 29, 2024.
10Ralph Losey, “Prosecutors and AI: Navigating Justice in the Age of Algorithms,” From the EDRM Blog, August 27, 2024.
Please cite as
Frank Giaime, “The Rise of High-Tech Policing,” Police Chief Online, June 4, 2025.
