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AI Patents Software United States

Software Could Help Reform Policing -- If Only Police Unions Wanted It (fastcompany.com) 258

tedlistens writes: The CEO of Taser maker Axon, Rick Smith, has a lot of high-tech ideas for fixing policing. One idea for identifying potentially abusive behavior is AI, integrated with the company's increasingly ubiquitous body cameras and the footage they produce. In a patent application filed last month, Axon describes the ability to search video not only for words and locations but also for clothing, weapons, buildings, and other objects. AI could also tag footage to enable searches for things such as "the characteristics [of] the sounds or words of the audio," including "the volume (e.g., intensity), tone (e.g., menacing, threatening, helpful, kind), frequency range, or emotions (e.g., anger, elation) of a word or a sound."

Building that kind of software is a difficult task, and in the realm of law enforcement, one with particularly high stakes. But Smith also faces a more low-tech challenge, he tells Fast Company: making his ideas acceptable both to intransigent police unions and to the communities those police serve. Of course, right now many of those communities aren't calling for more technology for their police but for deep reform, if not deep budget cuts. And police officers aren't exactly clamoring for more scrutiny, especially if it's being done by a computer.

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Software Could Help Reform Policing -- If Only Police Unions Wanted It

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  • Hehehe (Score:2, Insightful)

    One of the biggest enablers of police brutality, who got rich on it has ideas how to solve the problem his products exacerbated in the first place.

    Lovely.

    • Re:Hehehe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @11:28PM (#60513974)

      Indeed. Tasers were sold to the public as an alternative to using guns.

      They are used instead as an alternative to having a conversation.

      Don't taze me bro [wikipedia.org].

      • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @12:16AM (#60514112)

        Indeed. Tasers were sold to the public as an alternative to using guns. They are used instead as an alternative to having a conversation.

        Actually they are an alternative to the gun and the baton. So when non-conversational its taser or baton. Taser is likely the better option there too. As for non-conversational, there is a point where the conversation ends and its the officers choice not yours. When given instructions to sit down, lie down, put your hands behind your back, etc the conversation has ended and the compliance phase begins. You can keep talking but you cannot resist once the arrest decision has been made. If its unjust your lawyer will have to sort it out, congratulation, you may have won the lawsuit lottery. If you resist, you just threw away your lottery ticket because resistance will now be the just reason for your arrest.

        • When given instructions to sit down, lie down, put your hands behind your back, etc the conversation has ended and the compliance phase begins.

          No, that's when the shooting-you-anyway phase begins.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @07:32AM (#60514914) Homepage Journal

          In practice it seems like the cops are more likely to immediately scream an order at you, and then before you are able to react attack you. That seems to be what happened to Martin Gugino, if there was an order he certainly didn't have time to act on it before being assaulted.

          The problem now is that people don't believe they will be safe if they comply, so they sometimes run instead. For them it could be a matter of life or death, there is no way to know if that cop has a history of violence and is going to put his knee on your neck.

          Another problem is that it isn't always possible to comply. If they told me to lie down or hold my hands behind my back I would be physically unable to without causing myself a great deal of pain. If they are not willing to listen to me explaining that to them then I'm going to get violently assaulted and maybe tazed. The fact that there may eventually be a show trial where they are acquitted doesn't really comfort me much.

          • If people really don't believe it's safe to comply in a common arrest situation it's because they either have no common sense or have allowed silly people and the silly media override their common sense. You don't structure your behaviour around corner cases, if that behaviour in the common case is much more likely to get you killed or badly hurt. It's bad EV.

            As for abrupt behaviour by police, ignoring any specific instances for a moment, that is taught behaviour. It's not irrational or malicious, it's just

        • by Nugoo ( 1794744 )

          When given instructions to sit down, lie down, put your hands behind your back, etc the conversation has ended and the compliance phase begins. You can keep talking but you cannot resist once the arrest decision has been made. If its unjust your lawyer will have to sort it out, congratulation, you may have won the lawsuit lottery.

          If you survive. [youtube.com]

        • And put a knee in your back or choke you until you can't breath. You can fuck off now.
      • Re:Hehehe (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rossz ( 67331 ) <ogreNO@SPAMgeekbiker.net> on Thursday September 17, 2020 @02:21AM (#60514304) Journal

        San Francisco Police Department got their tazers taken away because of a long string of abuse. Seems the SF coops just loved using them for the shits and giggles. Last year there were regular radio ads with the chief of police trying to convince everyone they needed their tazers to be able to effectively do their job. My bullshit meter went off the scale.

        • That's where bodycams would enter into it.

          They came after tasers.

          • Yep, like I said, if you're a "businessman" worth your salt, you first create a problem by selling your crap to the government, and then "solve" the problem you created by selling even more crap.

            Sustainable business model.

          • Its amazing how they are always off whenever these controversies happen. How about a never turn off version. You get the device at shift change. It never goes home with you, and it records your entire on-duty activity. You should not be taking personal conversation while on duty anyway.

        • Asking as a non-US person, why are police unions so powerful in the US, and so determined to protect abusive police practices? Here they're mainly concerned about fair pay, health insurance, and employment issues. You know, the stuff a union is supposed to be doing for you.
          • They are a huge source of soft money for politicians in the US, thats cash donations and unions taking money from each paycheck and giving it to politicians. They also have been know to more directly affect voting by selective enforcement on voting days discouraging people from moving about, so stop and frisk and traffic violations.

          • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @06:58AM (#60514822)
            I think the easiest and most dangerous mis-conception to make here is to assume that the question here relates to "police unions". That might be the outward appearance of what is being discussed, but the truth is substantially different.

            Over the last few years, there have been numerous excellent investigative articles - to say nothing of a detailed FBI operation - looking at white supremacists and fascists infiltrating US Law Enforcement. Here are just a small selection of articles covering this:-

            White supremacists and malitias have infiltrated police across US [theguardian.com]
            The FBI warned for years that police are cozy with the far right. Is no one listening? [theguardian.com]
            White supremacist and far-right groups have infiltrated US law enforcement [trtworld.com]
            Hidden in Plan Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement [brennancenter.org]
            Body Bags and Enemy Lists: How Far-Right Police Officers and Ex-Soldiers Planned for 'Day X' [nytimes.com]
            White Supremacist Infiltration of US Police Forces: Fact-Checking National Security Advisor O'Brien [justsecurity.org]
            The FBI has quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement [theintercept.com]

            If we continue to think of this problem as "police unions" or "a few small bad apples", then we pre-emptively blind ourselves to a much larger, more sinister problem.

            Another way to think about this is to think of it as being similar to "genetic dominance". If two people - one with dark brown or black eyes and one with bright blue eyes - were to have a child, there is a much greater probability that their child would have dark brown or black eyes, because the gene that determines *brown* eye colour is naturally dominant over the gene for *blue* eyes.

            Now translate that concept to a moderately-sized police force. On day one, all your police officers are decent, law-abiding and neutral in their application of the law. Then one day a white supremacist is recruited. Over time they encourage friends to join - maybe it is a "power trip" thing; maybe it is a "firearms" thing. Slowly, imperceptibly, that police force begins to employ more and more white supremacists. Eventually, enough are present for more overt acts of racism. Non-white-supremacist officers are "encouraged" to turn a blind eye. It is exactly the same sort of "dominance mode" that we see in genetics. The "naturally decent and law abiding" officers in a department will typically be the silent, just-do-your-job-and-be-professional types. The manipulators are the white supremacists.

            Your question is critically important, then, because it gives us an opportunity to recognize the misconception and break it down.

            To borrow from technology fault-finding principles: we can't solve the problem until we correctly define it.
            • Woah! Very interesting, thanks! Wish I had mod points...
            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Too many people are in denial about the far right for anything to ever be done.

              • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @08:59AM (#60515236)
                I can't argue with your sentiment, but I think the problem here extends far beyond "the Far Right", or "Policing". I believe the problem you touch on is "lack of transparency".

                In many different cases, but in particular when we are talking about institutions and agencies - local government, state and federal - we are accustomed to thinking of them as opaque, mystifying and complex "things" where "stuff happens" that, honestly, we don't really have the time or interest to get involved with. A bit like, for example, the process by which a local police force obtains permission to use tazers.

                In my very limited experience, where decisions are made "behind closed doors", where there is no direct, personal accountability, where there is no transparency, decisions tend to be significantly poorer than those where decisions are made with transparency and participation. Fictional example: if "Charlie", Chief of Police, goes to his mate, Mayor Mike, and says, "Just wanted to let you know, my boys are gonna carry tazers now, so we don't have to shoot people. We think it will be safer..." and Mayer Mike says, "OK, sounds good", that's an example of a behind-closed-doors and risky decision.

                On the other hand, if Chief Charlie had to go before the Town Council and an open public meeting and explain why they wanted to carry tazers, chances are they would be asked to bring forward evidence that showed that tazers were needed, that they could reduce the risk to the public [innocent as well as guilty] and were safe to use.

                In my contrived example, I'm trying to show that good transparency leads to better decisions and a better society. But in a way that lends itself to the issue you give for "the far right". The reason that "The far right" infiltrate police forces is because there's no oversight. They don't have to answer for their actions.

                Imagine how different life would be if there were a federal law that said, "All on-duty law enforcement officers must wear a fully functional body cam whilst on duty, with a federally mandated punishment of 1) loss of one month's pay; 2) loss of 3 month's pay; 3) loss of job and 3 months in prison for a failure to comply..." suddenly what you'd find is that all the people who work as police for "questionable reasons" would want to work somewhere else, because you have just taken away their job satisfaction [which was obtained by abusing their authority].

                I'm particularly concerned with the discussions of "warrior culture" and the idea that public streets are some kind of war zone. If that is your outlook "going in", then you are actually creating a space in which any kind of extremist [far right or far left] becomes easier to spread.

                In the re-make of the sci-fi show, "BattleStar Galactica", Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos) is asked by President Roslyn () if he will put military on to the ships of the fleet to help maintain order. He refuses. His explanation is so vitally relevant here:-

                "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. " (See here [imdb.com]).

                That is exactly the problem we see today...
        • by ytene ( 4376651 )
          I participated in a public consultation on use of Tazers by my local police force.

          In one of the public meetings on the subject, I had written in a question/suggestion that was read out:-

          "If, as our Police Department insist, a Tazer is completely safe, then will the Chief and Deputy Police Chief - along with the senior officer for all departments/teams within the force wishing to use Tazers, agree, here and now, to submit themselves to being Tazed on a rolling two-year basis? In order to demonstrate th
      • Re:Hehehe (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @02:34AM (#60514324)

        I know when they where introduced where I live the whole pitch was that it could replace the gun as the "once in a career" absolute last resort.

        Here in Australia the thinking was always that using a firearm was something that would be done maybe once at the most in a policemans career, generally against a weapon weilding bandit to save a life.

        It was never SUPPOSED to be a compliance tool. The idea that using a lethal weapon against someone simply for disobeying or even putting up a struggle is abhorent. Its murder.

        So did the TASER get used for that once-in-a-lifetime lifesaving role? Nope. Its used as a compliance tool. "Get out of the car or I'll tase you". Hell we even imported that idiotic made up disease "Excited delerium" , a rare disase with the unique property that it only ever strikes simultaneously to a taser useage, but is totally not caused by the taser somehow, to excuse the fact the fucken things keep killing people.

        • Policy+permanently-on bodycams can fix this.

          Bodycam not working? The officer is regarded as off duty, without pay.

          • Removing the tasers will solve it. And it will be cheaper, too. You can even afford bodycams that not "malfunction" for the savings.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      If you are speaking strictly of the Taser, I think that was a well intentioned weapon gone wrong. One could make an argument about ongoing support of tasers, but even then I think there's room for people to credibly feel like they do more good than harm.

      The original problem: police only had guns and batons to subdue suspects. Both can kill or seriously injure with a high probability. A Taser is a safer weapon than either (though more dangerous than I think the inventors assumed it would be). So the Taser be

  • Has he not heard? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 )

    Software, if used by police, is inherently racist.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @11:47PM (#60514038)

      Software, if used by police, is inherently racist.

      Let's remember the old computing adage, "garbage in, garbage out".

      If you have a historical tendency of disproportionately heavy-handed policing in some neighborhoods, and your dataset therefore includes more crimes for people of those neighborhoods, and you use this dataset to train your machine-learning algorithm, then of course it will give you back the answer that people of those neighborhood are more likely to commit crimes. This isn't reflecting truth, just your selective training data. You can manually remove "ethnicity" from your dataset but the ML algorithm will be great at finding all its correlates.

      If you have a dataset with lots of white faces and few black faces, and you use this dataset to train your facial-recognition machine-learning algorithm, then of course it will give you back a recognizer that has a hard time distinguishing black faces. This isn't reflecting truth, just your selective training data.

      If you have a word-image dataset that's scraped from the kind of places on the internet that use racist or sexist slurs, and you use this dataset to train your image-describing machine-learning algorithm, then of course it will give you back a recognizer that uses racist and sexist slurs to describe images. This isn't reflecting truth or the English language, just your selective training data. https://thenextweb.com/neural/... [thenextweb.com]

      Machine-learning algorithms would be wonderful ways to help our society if only we could provide fair and balanced training data. I've never yet seen that happen.

  • Forget AI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @10:43PM (#60513878)
    Let's just get ubiquitous bodycam recording first. Accessible (to either the police or the public) only through court order.
    • No, AI can solve any problem. Haven't you heard?
    • Prior Art. Just ask Israeli Airport screeners or any seasoned policeman. Plus no AI, every example will be in Police TV series, starting with black or white, good neighbourhood / bad neighbourhood, gang tattoos, bling, caps, hoodies, time of day/night or simply known to police who work that patch. Every cop watches Death Wish, so they know what to look for and who has it coming. It is time bad mothers get fairly blamed for not teaching their wayward offspring 'If you run, you will get it in the back'. The A
      • Every cop watches Death Wish, so they know what to look for and who has it coming.

        That is pretty much the exemplar of a stupid statement.

  • by fred911 ( 83970 ) on Wednesday September 16, 2020 @11:56PM (#60514062) Journal

    Police unions act as if they are responsible for standards of arrest even when the DA specifically provides instructions. Take a look at how the Philly PD listens to their DA.

    Do we allow military to unionize? Why should we tolerate the unionization of police. I mean lately our PD has as much of the same equipment, except our military has rules of engagement enforced via courts marshall. Cops have no such liability.

    • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @12:54AM (#60514196)

      our military has rules of engagement enforced via courts marshall. Cops have no such liability.

      Untrue. The limited immunity of police only covers their actions that are (1) within the law and (2) within department policy. If you think of law+policy as a rules of engagement its actually pretty similar between police and military. The difference in reality is that laws and policies of the military are more restrictive.

      • No, it is true [wikipedia.org] unfortunately.
        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          No, it is true [wikipedia.org] unfortunately.

          You realize your link is less strict that what I said? Did you read what I wrote? Perhaps you should re-read to understand your error. What I described, law plus department policy, is part of basic law enforcement training in my state. Your link merely mentions the law, I suppose some states may not include policy.

          Even if only the law, it is still equivalent to the military rules of engage since such rules are orders and legal orders (and regulations) are the law in the military.

          What is confusing you

  • And police officers aren't exactly clamoring for more scrutiny, especially if it's being done by a computer.

    Because AI, like incomplete and edited video clips, will probably not provide context or the complete story.

    Face it, the software would probably do little more than count flagged words or phrases. With all the precision we see with voice dictation on our smart phones at best

  • Too many police officers today are little more than wannabe Gestapo impatiently waiting for the next Hitler to come along. This isn't a problem just in the United States, but in a lot of democratic countries. In the wake of an incident the popo in my city are enthusiastically sweeping under the rug, a joke has started making the rounds.

    Q: Why haven't the cops come out with a beefcake calendar like the fire fighters did?

    A: Amazon couldn't provide enough theatrical makeup to hide all the swastika tattoos.

  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @12:30AM (#60514146) Journal
    Face it: all this 'AI' stuff just turns out to be UTTER CRAP. It's not going to fix the problem of racist violent police it'll just end up ENABLING it.

    You want to 'fix' police problems in this country? Try civilian oversight of police departments. Also get rid of 'qualified immunity'. No 'get out of jail free' cards for cops who shoot first and cover it up later. Enough is enough. We need to POLICE THE POLICE since they clearly and objectively can't be trusted to do it themselves.
    Top to bottom. Everyone from the Chief of Police on down to the lowliest beat cop should answer to a civilian oversight committee, constituted of members that reflect the constituents of the affected neighborhoods -- so it the neighborhood is, say, 75% African Americans, then the committee shall be 75% African Americans.
    This is the ONLY WAY things are going to change. Law Enforcement has had it's chance to change things and they didn't bother.

    That's just the beginning. There needs to be fundamental changes in how police conduct themselves. I needn't even get into that there's been plenty of talk already about changing how they're trained to deal with suspects and the mentally ill. I'll add that we need to audit all current police, screening them for violent and racist tendencies, and remove those, and screen all new candidates the same way to prevent them from ever getting a badge and a gun in the first place. The problem is systemic and there needs be a systemic solution.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )

      Face it: all this 'AI' stuff just turns out to be UTTER CRAP.

      Not all of it. AlphaZero turned out to be really great at chess.

  • by jandoe ( 6400032 ) on Thursday September 17, 2020 @02:18AM (#60514302)

    What about actually reforming the police? You know, passing new laws that would define new standards for police conduct? Maybe clearly define their rights, training, requirements.
    Just kidding, I know that it's no longer possible to pass any meaningful laws in US. I guess giving more money to some corporation is the only possible action here.

    • It should be done right after the reform of the prison system.

      A country with more people imprisoned than any other country in history and where prison rape is regarded as funny by most of the citizens is nothing to be proud of.

      • by jandoe ( 6400032 )

        Which should be done right after the reform of justice system, healthcare, political party financing, election system, environmental management, tax system, banking, personal data protections.... But nothing will be reformed, no matter who wins in November.

    • First, go read the Constitution and then answer the question.
      At what level of government?

      At the local level? Go for it. Just know that it won't be the same across the state

      . At the state level? Go for it. You live in a state and you can work to change your states laws. This is where most of shit people like you want the federal government to do should be done. You will, however, have different standards in different states.

      At the federal leve? The federal government has limits on it's power, or is su
  • Just don't hire good old boy white supremacists to be police. No military vets in the police force either. They're trained to kill, not keep the peace.
  • ...most police officers haven't got a clue about the law or even when they are allowed to ask for ID.

  • . . . the patent issued last month. The patent application was filed on August 15, 2017.

    Axon was thinking about this three years ago.

  • More bullshit.

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