What Happened?
Police departments across the country are deploying new technology innovations to improve efficiency and performance outcomes. Many law enforcement agencies are teaming up with the tech industry to develop solutions to common police issues.
Seattle Hackathon
The Seattle Police Department has launched its own body camera pilot program in an effort to improve transparency and accountability. The project generated more than 1 million hours of police surveillance video footage that must be sorted through and shared.
To ensure the footage is organized and optimized efficiently, the Seattle Police Department is hosting a hackathon to engage local tech-savvy residents in helping tackle the estimated 364 terabytes of video content. The police department wants to share the video footage with the public while maintaining privacy of those filmed. The hackathon will collect ideas on how to accelerate the video redaction process and simplify the sharing of the footage with the public, GeekWire reported.
The hackathon is challenging local developers to create software to:
- Blur faces
- Distort license plate numbers
- Mute sensitive audio information
Currently, the police department spends at least 30 minutes manually redacting or removing sensitive information from just one minute of video footage. The department seeks a tool to identify sensitive faces, numbers or voices automatically and remove the footage.
Gunfire Detection
Cities across the country are adopting gunfire-detection technology to help police departments detect and locate gunshots quickly and efficiently. The technology is designed to lead police officers directly to scenes of shootings faster so evidence and suspects can be collected promptly, News Journal reported.
The gunfire-detection solution includes acoustic sensors that are placed throughout a community to pick up on sounds of gunshots. When gunfire is detected by one of the acoustic sensors, an alert is sent directly to law enforcement officials. The gunshot data is stored in a database to enable gun crime data analysis and trends reporting, News Journal reported.
Facial Recognition App
South Australian police officers have adding a new application to their arsenals that enable smartphones to scan images of suspects’ faces while in the field. The smartphone app then compares the image against collected pictures of past offenders in the law enforcement database. The technology will help police officers identify suspected offenders faster and more efficiently, IT News reported.
The application will be compatible with mobile devices as well as desktop computers so police officers in the field, as well as forensics specialists can access the database and enable:
- Verification
- Identification
- Matches with watch-lists
The recognition technology is being tested by South Australian police and, if successful, may be picked up by other law enforcement agencies throughout the country, IT News reported.
According to The New American, other recognition technology used to track license plates can also identify drivers and passengers faces by accessing a law enforcement database. Once a photo has been taken in the field or uploaded from an online source, it can be matched against a gallery of images being populated by law enforcement and third party managers. The database typically includes mugshots, registered sex offender and other data from continually updated lists.
High Tech Police
Gov1 has reported on a growing number of technologies police are investing in to improve efficiency and performance outcomes.