The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | March 2024
Continued from previous page three weeks to find ,” says Hsiung .
The initiative crosses county lines . “ Each chief gets to decide what to share with neighboring agencies ,” Hsiung says . “ We share our buckets of data with our neighbors ’ buckets .”
Investigations Among Europol ’ s several AI initiatives , among the most promising is its application of Retrieval Augmented Generation ( RAG ). RAG is an AI system that makes it possible to chat with documents . RAG uses Large Language Models ( LLMs ) as one of its components to interact with text documents , in particular to answer questions , retrieve paragraphs of interest , or summarize their contents . The objective of the Europol research is to use RAG on data sets from exceptionally large investigations that might cover several member states and millions of pieces of data . “ We can put this data in a large language model and create hypotheses that we can test with this sort of investigators ’ version of ChatGPT ,” says Gregory Mounier , Head of Europol ’ s Innovation Lab . “ This is a new frontier in policing .”
Over the past nine months or so , the Europol Innovation Lab has developed and tested different RAG prototypes , Mournier says . He adds that they continue to work on the prototypes and fine tune the models , as well as ensure compliance with the recently passed Artificial Intelligence Act . They hope to introduce the new technology to several member states by the end of the year .
Real-Time Crime Centers Real-time crime centers ( RTCCs ) collect feeds from surveillance cameras , license-plate readers , emergency call records , gunshot detectors , drones and other sensors to help police immediately identify , respond to and investigate incidents and trends . Though the first RTCC emerged almost two decades ago , they are popping up around the globe — 150 in the United States alone — sometimes augmented with AI .
Police in the St . Cloud ( Florida ) RTCC use AI to sift through more than 7,000 video feeds and license-plate readers to search for types of vehicles — based on color and other features — and individuals by what they are wearing . The London Underground is testing AI in its RTCC to detect body language , behavior and physical movements for possible threat indicators in its underground rail system . It is searching for activity such as far evasion , suicidal behavior and pickpocketing . Nice , France , is preparing for the upcoming summer Olympics by powering its RTCC with AI to capture , cull and analyze data generated from facial recognition , advanced video analytics and other technologies .
In each case , however , civil liberties and privacy advocates have pushed back against potential abuses , such as misidentification of suspects and objects . Jurisdictions have responded with legislation , regulation , stricter policies and guidelines , or temporary cessation of AI . Some departments are so spooked by the public perception of AI that they have banished it from their RTCCs .
This article documents only a few of the many law enforcement forays into AI . Experts agree that the technology and applications are still in their infancy . Europol ’ s Mounier foresees “ something like an unmanned police future .” Generative AI will be much more powerful than today , he predicts , and will be combined with powerful , dexterous robots that could range in size from an insect to a one-ton behemoth . “ If you inject an intelligent brain in a physically powerful robot , you can imagine an exciting but challenging future ,” he says .
Are we ready ?
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