Despite growing public distrust in the use of AI by law enforcement, one Arizona police department says it will use the technology to help investigators manage heavy case loads.
The rural city of Eloy located along Interstate 10 south of metro Phoenix is adopting new, AI-powered software to streamline police investigations. eSleuth Inc. says it provides thousands of AI “investigators” to help police connect cases and look for leads.
The Eloy Police Department is the first agency in the country to partner with the company.
Byron Gwaltney is the captain of Eloy’s patrol division and said the department first discovered the technology at a policing convention.
“As a small agency, our Chief Sergio Banales is always looking for innovative ways to capitalize on technology to bridge the gap between, you know, resources and workload and, you know, looking to the future,” Gwaltney said. “His goal is for us … to take the lead on innovation for small agencies.”
Scott Thomasson co-founded eSleuth and says he built the program to mimic real investigative techniques. Thomasson has law-enforcement experience and says he was chief of firearms for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms for more than a decade.
“Instead of being a detective working one case, you've got thousands of detectives over your shoulder helping you that are working 24/7, never sleep, never take time off,” he said.
According to the company, police departments first give the software full access to all of its case data, then the digital investigator analyzes the information for connections.
“We point all thousands of those virtual investigators at every open investigation, and it breaks down into four things: what was done, what wasn't done, what should be done, and what's incomplete. And then it provides the investigator with a list of tasks to work on,” Thomasson said.
As with all AI technology, this new frontier of policing carries risks and public distrust. Michael Scott is director of Arizona State University’s Center for Problem-Oriented Policing and says the implications of using AI for active investigations could be problematic.
“My experience tells me that AI is really not all that good,” Scott said. “It's not all that accurate, and it tends to make certain kinds of errors. In the context of policing, could the consequences be very significant? The wrong person being arrested, the wrong person being prosecuted, and you know those are really dire consequences.”
Scott said although the technology has the potential to uncover leads that would take human detectives a long time to find, artificial intelligence still needs more regulations before becoming the norm.
Other concerns for the use of the AI tool stem from data security, as none of the information provided to eSleuth is redacted. Gail-Joon Ahn is director of the Laboratory of Security Engineering for Future Computing at ASU and said a program like this requires significant protections.
“Technology alone is not sufficient… every access to sensitive information should be aligned with rigorous audit trails that record who accessed what data, when, for what purpose, and how the information was used," Ahn said.
eSleuth, Inc. uploads its data to the Amazon Web Service cloud, which has had previous data breaches. Thomasson said the cloud uses protections developed by the FBI and Department of Defense. He declined to comment on other proprietary methods.
“The law enforcement data is always the department’s data. It’s not ours,” he said. “We’re just taking a copy of it, and then working off the copy.”
The Eloy Police Department is still in the process of installing the program and uploading its data. Gwaltney said the city will pay for the service using funds from the nationwide opioid settlement program.
“Police decisions are being made by police officers, not by a computer, not by artificial intelligence,” Gwaltney said. “It may save us time in researching data, but we are not relying on — and I don't know that we are in any capacity within the spectrum of law enforcement relying on — AI to do our job. It's simply a tool.”
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