Artificial intelligence(AI) isn’t a tool of the future—it’s a present-day need. In a time when technology is getting smarter by the day, it’s imperative that law enforcement agencies (LEAs) have the opportunity to access technology that can help them perform their duties more efficiently and more accurately.

When using the proper tools, we see that AI makes an invaluable assistant to productivity. It can reserve man-hours, optimize workflows, and allocate more resources toward human-centric tasks that cannot be automated.

As a part of Veritone’s commitment to helping law enforcement agencies improve workflows and increase transparency and trust with the communities they serve, we’ve developed a series on how AI can help relieve existing pain points and improve day-to-day functionalities.

How is law enforcement using AI?

It may sound like something reserved for big tech companies, but AI can be used in a wide range of functional tools that law enforcement agencies can leverage to improve efficiency and accuracy. While AI doesn’t (and most likely never will) have the power to replace human abilities, what it can do is automate tedious, time-consuming tasks and prepare data for human review, insight, and interaction.

In a nutshell: the right AI-infused tools can help law enforcement agencies maximize productivity and help them perform tasks at scale so they can dedicate more attention and resources to human-centric tasks.

Artificial Intelligence for law enforcement streamlines investigations

Veritone’s AI solutions for law enforcement were created to automate the back office tasks that take dozens of employees and hundreds of man-hours to complete so law enforcement’s human efforts can persist.

One tool that can accelerate investigations and help process evidence more efficiently is Veritone Illuminate, which assists with analyzing electronically stored information (ESI), including structured and unstructured data.  

Eighty percent of the world’s data is unstructured, (i.e. video, audio or image files, log files, social media posts, etc), so it’s no surprise that huge amounts of evidence are also unstructured. And since unstructured data in particular is so time-consuming to manually search through and analyze, it’s not uncommon that large amounts of digital evidence end up not being reviewed simply because the volume of work required to manually analyze it would drain department resources. 

Sifting through ESI manually puts immense pressure on departments, but Veritone Illuminate culls down evidentiary media quickly and makes it searchable by keywords, heads, other objects, and more. This means that investigators can review relevant data in a fraction of the time. 

The application can also:

  • Reveal previously uncovered front-end insights with cutting-edge analytics 
  • Transcribe and translate audio evidence, thereby enabling keyword or phrase searches
  • Promote collaboration and sharing to other team members

Beyond making ESI analysis more manageable (and cost-effective), Veritone offers other tools that can aid in investigations, such as Veritone IDentify, Veritone Redact, Veritone Tracker, and Veritone Investigate.

Artificial Intelligence for suspect identification

Access to countless hours of video evidence can help LEAs identify suspects and solve cases, but many agencies still sift through these seemingly endless loads of footage manually, which occupies a lot of department resources.

Not unlike the stored fingerprints of known-offender and person-of-interest records within LEA databases, booking photos of these individuals can also be used as a foundation to compare against collected video or still-image evidence, enabling more operational efficiency and accuracy among departments. 

By leveraging AI solutions such as Veritone IDentify to help them identify suspects quicker than ever before, police can streamline the process of suspect identification and allow the software to analyze previously booked and arrested individuals recorded in their own databases. 

The application can also: 

  • Create virtual “six pack” line-ups of potential suspects for further evaluation
  • Share suspect lists with intra- and inter-agency colleagues 
  • Organize evidence by case including case details such as ID, department, officer(s), description, etc. 

Using IDentify optimizes investigative workflows, allocates human hours to more important tasks, and significantly reduces costs for law enforcement agencies. There are other time-saving opportunities for LEAs to use AI while processing ESI, particularly in regard to redacting sensitive information.  

Artificial Intelligence for Audio & Video Redaction

There is a demand for both public justice and public safety agencies to provide audio, video, and image-based evidence with redacted sensitive information. Redaction ensures the safety of witnesses, complies with freedom of information laws, and meets requirements for public records requests. The process of manually redacting this information is both time-consuming and expensive for agencies—so how can applications of AI in law enforcement help? 

Rather than dedicating dozens of employees and hundreds of man-hours to manual redaction, agencies can use AI-infused tools like Veritone Redact to detect and redact specific items (like heads or license plates) in a quick, cost-effective manner. 

After the agency has redacted their audio, video, or image-based evidence, Redact then allows them to download that information to their local computer for further processing. 

The application can also: 

  • Manage digital evidence redaction workloads by tagging audio and video evidence with its status in the approval workflow
  • Capture comprehensive reporting of all actions taken against redacted digital evidence to support compliance with chain of custody requirements 

With AI-assisted redaction, identification, and discovery, public safety agencies can increase efficiency, improve investigative workflow, and optimize their day-to-day operations while increasing transparency and building better relationships with their community. 

Should agencies and teams need further assistance with managing the redaction workload from a third party, Veritone offers Redaction Managed Service.

Artificial Intelligence for Tracking Persons of Interest

In a world where mountains of data can be created in a matter of seconds, video footage from multiple sources and angles is a double-edged sword for investigators. On one hand, the likeliness of finding footage of a suspect, witness, or victim increases drastically, but it could take several hours and employees to comb through and find them.

With Veritone Tracker, agencies and investigators have a greater ability to quickly track individuals across videos, which can help teams locate persons of interest (POI) across several videos without the use of personally identifiable information (PII), so teams will remain within compliance with privacy laws.

Key features of Veritone Tracker include:

  • Human-like object (HLO) Identification builds the necessary criteria for AI to compare against other video files by identifying and defining human-like objects in a video frame. 
  • Confidence-based similarity detection doesn’t use facial or biometric recognition, which maintains compliance with privacy laws and protects the PII of those involved.
  • Multi-source video analysis speeds up the video analysis process while collecting valuable insights. 

In situations where time is of the essence, AI can help agencies find critical information so investigators can focus their energy on more crucial efforts. 

Artificial Intelligence for evidence management

The rising volume of digital data has led to challenges for LEAs, investigators, and other teams handling digital evidence. These challenges range anywhere from workflow inefficiencies and backlogs to burnout and budget constraints.

Veritone Investigate addresses these issues by offering an AI-powered Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) that enables public safety agencies and organizations to efficiently access, search, manage, organize, and share digital evidence. 

Veritone Investigate facilitates faster investigations and strengthens legal processes by allowing users to:

  • Seamlessly switch between apps, including Veritone Redact, iDentify, Tracker, and Illuminate 
  • Manage, organize, share, and distribute digital evidence
  • Instantaneously enrich files with metadata, including unstructured data
  • Automate and optimize workflow within a custom interface

This platform operates within one secured CJIS-Compliant cloud environment, and, unlike conventional systems, Veritone Investigate is powered by AI tools that work with a comprehensive suite of solutions—allowing LEAs to analyze, manage, prepare, and share digital evidence in one safe and secure central hub.

Building Trust and Transparency With the Community

Over the last few years, an important discussion about policing has arisen throughout the US. In our 2021 Transparency and Trust report, we surveyed 3,000 Americans and found encouraging responses:

  • 4 out of 5 Americans feel safe in their communities and most credit the police
  • 42% say lack of transparency has hurt their perception of law enforcement
  • 84% say police should focus on responding to violent crime matters
  • 61% say they trust the police to use technology to aid in suspect identification

Public demand for transparency is higher than ever before, which has put a strain on law enforcement man-hours, but fortunately, technology is now mature enough to help LEAs create more transparency at a scalable level. 

The relationship between law enforcement and technology can be strenuous: over the past few decades, there has been a boom in tech that could help with investigations and identifying suspects, like footage from CCTV or cellphones, but there weren’t many tools that could help departments keep up with the evergrowing needs for data management and processing.

AI-infused tools like Veritone Illuminate, IDentify, and Redact can alleviate these pressures, which helps address the public’s desire for greater transparency and allows LEAs to better tend to violent crime responses.

IN THIS SERIES:

How Law Enforcement Builds Transparency and Trust With Technology

This blog will dive into Veritone’s Trust and Transparency Report and discusses how technology can bridge the gap between LEAs and the communities they serve.

Racial and Identity Profiling in Law Enforcement Agencies

States with laws regarding racial and identity profiling in law enforcement may unintentionally create a heavier workload for officers. Learn about how AI technology can help optimize this workflow. 

Processing FOIA Requests With AI 

Discover how AI technology can help law enforcement agencies keep up with the demands of Freedom of Information Act requests in a timely manner.

How AI Can Help Law Enforcement Identify Suspects Faster

Learn how Veritone solutions for law enforcement can assist with faster, safer, and more accurate suspect identification.