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Drones, robots, license plate readers: Police grapple with community concerns as they turn to tech for their jobs
Last year, police in Mountain View, Calif., knew they had a potentially dangerous situation on their hands when a man barricaded himself inside an unlocked three-story townhouse along with the homeowners.
Police received a call from the homeowners, who said the man was armed with a knife. They didn’t know whether they could safely enter the home and they didn’t know the man’s intentions. So instead of taking any risk, police called in their trusty sidekick: a camera-equipped drone.
Officers on the ground used the drone to live stream video from the second- and third-floor windows, giving them the opportunity to assess the gravity of the situation and the location of the suspect. They quickly learned the man did not have any visible weapons on him.
“There was no risk to life, so we let him sit in there and did our best to communicate with him,” said Lt. Scott Nelson of the Mountain View Police Department. “No use of force was needed.”
Police across the United States are increasingly relying on emerging technologies to make their jobs more efficient. They are using drones, license plate readers, body cameras and gunshot detection systems to reduce injury and bodily harm.
The move comes as some law enforcement agencies are struggling with retention and hiring during the pandemic, when hundreds of cops in cities including Los Angeles and New York were sidelined because of the spread of the coronavirus.
As police departments determine which technologies to adopt, they are also grappling with growing concerns about privacy that these technologies bring and potential complications they could create for officers on the job.
“Tech can be a great tool for law enforcement to use,” said Sgt. James Smallwood, Nashville-based treasurer of the national Fraternal Order of Police. But “as with anything else, we have to balance the line of privacy and meeting the expectation to promote public safety.”
DJI, the Chinese tech company that makes many of the drones adopted by police departments, said more than 1,000 police departments across the country use some type of drone. Drones are proving to be a police force multiplier across the nation, aiding with everything from lost children to dangerous suspects to crash reconstruction. But Lisberg doesn’t think they’ll ever replace police officers.
“You need a sense of humanity at work in policing,” he said. “A drone is a tool that helps accomplish the goals [police] already have. [To] do it better, safely and more efficiently.”
Drones aren’t the only tech tools that police say have made them more efficient. More than 120 cities are using gunshot detection systems, which alert police to gunfire within the devices’ coverage area.
The systems use sensors and algorithms that can identify and determine which loud bangs are probably gunshots. Within about 60 seconds, they can alert police to the precise location in which the gunshots were heard. That allows police to better deploy their resources.
“Police chiefs are looking for innovative ways to deal with the responsibilities they have,” he said. “They’re finding ways to provide them even in areas where budgets are tight.”
To be sure, not all of the technology is proving to be positive, says Griffith of Houston’s police union. He noted that while tech can add a level of efficiency, it also can increase stress levels for officers, who have been experiencing increased scrutiny for excessive use of force and discriminatory practices in recent years.
Body cameras, for example, can help police and the community better understand the details around an incident in which an officer resorted to use of force. But the cameras also can catch small, sometimes minor policy violations from police that don’t affect the overall outcome of any situation, such as whether a police officer buckled his seat belt before pressing the gas, Griffith said.
“We know that there will be more tech coming,” he said. “But we pray it’s something that will help [officers] and not make it to where they have to be perfect every minute of every day.”
Police also have to walk a fine line when it comes to implementing new technology, taking into account the community’s comfort level and privacy concerns, they say.
Farhang Heydari, executive director of the nonprofit Policing Project at New York University School of Law, said he’s mostly concerned with increasing access to private cameras and third-party databases and the ability to tie them together, which could create a new kind of surveillance, he said.
That has the potential to magnify some of the harms of policing, like the overenforcement of low-level crime or the exacerbation of racial disparities. Ultimately, Heydari says, police shouldn’t be charged with deciding on their own what technology to use. Regulators and communities should, he said.