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Writer's pictureDaniel Zehnder

"Artificial Intelligence" Analysis of BWC Video: Three Things to Think About

There was a recent story on National Public Radio that began with the premise that there are far too many body camera videos for a police agency to review all of them unless they use "artificial intelligence" or, perhaps more accurately, "automated analysis". While this is certainly true, there are three points of that are being left out of this discussion.

1)        These automated analysis systems are only currently designed to gauge police-citizen interactions. That is of immense assistance to the police agencies and the communities they serve. However, they do not look at other factors of equal importance such as officer safety or officer tactics. Automated analysis would not, for example, identify a video where an officer that was professional in his or her interaction with a member of the public but whose officer safety was poor. This can only currently be identified by looking at videos by a human.

2)        There must be processes in place at the agency level to ensure that some proper and effective actions are taken to address what is identified through automated analysis. These processes must be integrated into a strategic review process that uses the analysis output as well as human review. And it is not enough to simply leave this at the first-line supervisor level alone. The agency itself has a responsibility to review its level.

3)        Agencies that use this technology may believe that automated analysis review of police-citizen encounter BWC video is sufficient and fail to look further at what is being recorded. It is clearly unreasonable to expect an agency to look at every video recorded but certainly there is an implied responsibility and an expectation that someone is looking at more than what automated analysis identifies. Setting up such a review process is not as daunting as it appears. It can be done even in the largest of agencies. Perhaps one day these programs will be able to assist in identifying the majority of risks to an agency and its officers. That day isn’t here yet.


Interested in how to address this challenge? Contact Principis Group for a complimentary one-hour consultation.


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