How Drones and AI Are Transforming Policing

There's two things cops hate. For things to change and for things to stay the same. >> Most of the cops in the field are going to have to change the way their skill set is shaped because it's going to be a little bit more investigative. It's going to be a little bit more nuanced. It's not going to look the same anymore. >> Are people just going to start see drones flying around? Is that where we are?

You hear a gunshot go off and the drone finds a shooter getting into a car and driving off and then pursuing the vehicle. It's kind of almost hard to see that it isn't inevitable. We can't do that with a helicopter today unless you just kept five helicopters up 247 and that's just not sustainable. >> What advice would you give to founders who are less interested in optimizing ad clicks and more interested in actually building something that

helps first responders and save lives? >> My advice for them is >> I'm on the board of Flock Safety. There's other other companies that like Skyo that make make drones. uh you know I'm the recipient of constant you know notifications from you guys. Hey we found a kidnapped child. We we used the technology in this way. You know we were able to deescalate a situation. I I remember a story from uh uh one story where uh

somebody called 911 and said hey there's a guy in the alleyway with a shotgun. Well you can imagine how a police officer would respond to that call. But it turned out the drone provided uh you know situational awareness and said wait there's just a janitor with a broom. That's not a guy with a shotgun and it totally deescalates the situation. Uh so it's really uh incredible. Um any anything else we should know, Rahul, about where are

we in the sort of nationwide in the state of drone deployment? What are people just going to start see drones flying around? Is that is that where we are? >> Yeah, look, I mean I I would drones are they're they're flying robots. Um, and as we see AI, robotics sweep every industry, we like all these industries are looking for ways to either automate things, make things more efficient, make things more effective. Uh, drones are a similar

piece of that. And in public safety, the short answer is we are going to see more drones. We're going to see also potentially more hostile drones that we have to be prepared for. Um, you're going to see, you know, more police and fire department drones are, you know, responding to fire calls across the country. and flock safety, you know, we it's not just about drones for us. Like we have multitudes of sensors in in the community.

We have lifeway reading cameras. We have, you know, gunshot detection capabilities. All of this is coming together. um all this data where you know you're able to determine oh that's an Amber Alert vehicle and the drone takes off and chases the Amber Alert vehicle or you hear a gunshot you know go off and the drone finds a you know a shooter getting into a car and driving off and then pursuing the vehicle even on the highways

you know with with DPS. That's something that it's kind of almost hard to see that it isn't inevitable. We can't do that with a helicopter today unless you just kept five helicopters up 24/7 and that's just not sustainable. This is the only way to actually achieve that level of safety. >> I I joked earlier that uh it's a bad time to be an enemy of America. You know, from Maduro to Aleno to the Ayatollah, but it

sounds like it's going to be a bad time to be a criminal uh here in America. Uh Colonel Glover, talk about some of the other technologies and capabilities that you've been able to deploy that really changes the equation for law enforcement, either helping the officers uh or helping the general public or or most cases both. >> Yeah. So, there's a couple of different things that we're doing. um sort of like an ecosystem or pl platform within

the agency that we've done. Um one of one of it is one of the piece of it is is being able to make sure that we're giving the officers what they need to do to be successful, but it's also about their own mental health and well-being. So they have um we utilize vitania uh heal the heroes. It's uh basically you know brain scan sort of start off the day and everything to figure out exactly you know

how are you doing you know temperature check. Um then they go out they can do their shift on the be behind the body warn camera. We have analytics that's trulio that's running behind the um the body warn camera just to see for the behavior and interaction. Part of that was you know looking at you know you can do a scorecard for how the trooper is interacting with the public but it also gets a little bit of

an of information on how the public is interacting with that trooper uh to see if they're combed or not. and it can flag the situation as well for the supervisor. Uh outside of that, you have what will essentially is um it helps with them being able to have that that feeling of you know I have a little bit of a layer of protection um because with this is going to flag for the burnout as well. Uh

and that was one of the things that the associations and speaking with them about this is was that from the advent of our body warn camera and being able to take that technology run those analytics behind it be able to check for those that had burnout um where if we need to pull them from the field if we need to do something a little bit different um we started instituting well checks and uh sbaticals for those

that are at the 15 and 25 year mark to be able to help help optimize their performance so that way when they out in the field, they feel good about what they're doing and they have job satisfaction. >> Absolutely. It's been amazing uh to see that the public sentiment shift over things like body cams. You know, at first people were very against body cams. Uh even some of the officer unions were against body cams. Then they

realized, wait a minute, you see all the dumb things that uh the criminals do. Uh so that's pretty good. It it protects our officers. Um but also provides you game tape, gives you footage. It could be coaching, mental health services, make sure that somebody uh who needs a break gets a break. And uh really incredible technology. I remember the same discussion happened with Taser. So we see this over and over again with technology that we sort

of have to go through a hype cycle of of uh of reaction. Uh but it's great to see those things being being deployed. Do you want to talk a little bit real quickly uh about the intelligence gathering apparatus? I think that uh you know, you've mentioned it a couple times that we you know, we shifted law enforcement to really making sure that we have all the information we need. Talk about at the Department of Public Safety

uh how you're how you're working to really make sure that officers have uh the best information available. >> Yeah. So, one of the things that we're leaning into as well is is that we have the Arizona counterterrorism and center, the actic. Um, so with fusion centers, the fusion centers around the the US are are collaborating and and working together in tandem to make sure that they're sharing information. Um, you have the uh TRX program which a

lot of us are doing for FIFA right now because that's the that's the the big event that's coming up as well as the Olympics. Um, but one of the things in Arizona that I'm doing is I'm leaning heavily into be making sure that we're having sort of an international presence as well. So we have a lot of partnerships um with different groups especially you know of course we are a border state so we have the state

of Sonora Mexico that's right next to us we're looking at being able to have the ability of having intelligence officers from uh Mexico from the UAE from Liberia from different uh parts of the world because the world is getting a lot smaller uh we all know that crime is happening everywhere being able to condense that down and distill it to where we can have good information sharing that's unclassified to just be able to share with one

another on trends and being able to backs stop that with some of the technology and AI helps us with being able to actually stop a lot of the trends before they start. >> Absolutely. We saw, you know, very sadly in Austin that global events have local repercussions. So, I think uh we've seen in New York City that their uh counterterrorism work at the NYPD uh has been very successful. I'm excited to hear that you're bringing that

kind of a program into into Arizona. Uh, Rahul, you you know, you started out as a policeman, as a as a paramedic. Uh, now that you've seen all this technology, some of which you've brought to bear in public safety. Uh, you know, do you think there's still great opportunities in public safety? What would you what advice would you start to give to founders who are, you know, less interested in optimizing ad clicks and, you know, more

interested in actually building something that that helps first responders and saves lives? And, uh, what would you say? You know, I already know great founders uh that are working in public safety. It's funny, the colonel was talking about uh tracking the performance of his uh you know, the members of his department in Burnout. There's a founder here, Ben Curley, in the audience that is uh the CEO of Sharp Performance that does exactly that. You should introduce

you after this. You haven't met him already. >> We're already talking to >> All right. Good. Good. Um but there's plenty of great founders out there that are that are that are uh tackling public safety. My advice for them is like look, it comes off as very intimidating. I'm sure the colonels heard this saying, but it's there's two things cops hate for things to change and for things to stay the same. And so it feels like

a a very narrow thread that you have to hit. But the reality is that if you can picture something that feels like an inevitability in the same way that you know we talk about drones, AI, some of these things recognize that that change will come no matter what. It'll come because it's the best thing for them. It's the best thing for the communities. It's the best thing for the country. and just take it upon yourself to

be the person that brings a change. Don't be intimidated by it just because they're cops. Um, and then if you do do it, I would say spend a lot of time with the cops, too. Just like Dr. Karp said previously, it is hard if you don't know what they've been through, what it feels like to be on the beat. Spend time, do some ride alongs. Um, really get an understanding of it. Be a reserve cop, you

know, if you want to uh really get into it and that'll really help you not only speak the language, but know what to build for them. Colonel Glover, any final words that you want to share for uh the people that want to work with law enforcement, work with public safety officials? What's the best way to to partner and work with you? >> Well, back to R's point is is really is jump in. I mean, jump in,

really engage, connect. Um, you know, you're going to find there's a lot of law enforcement leaders that are looking to figure out the best ways of implementation and trying to get ahead of the curve with technology. We know that it's going to it's going to be something that's going to really dominate this profession over the next 10 years is that we're going to see such a shift and change that most of the cops out on the

in the field are going to have to change the way their skill set is shaped because it's going to be a little bit more investigative. It's going to be a little bit more nuanced. Um you're going to have to have a different frame uh work of being able to work with in terms of your mindset because it's not going to look the same anymore 10 years from now. Um it it's it may not be about, you

know, um kicking in doors and and other things. It's going to be looking at the the technical aspects of, you know, this video you just received and looking at AI and and certain things that are going to come up from a fraud standpoint as well. And so you're it's going to be very nuanced in that way. And so that it's they're they're every leader is looking at how do we make this adjustment? How do we become

a little bit more flexible and adaptable to what's going to be the need? >> Awesome. Well, thank you both, gentlemen. Appreciate the work you do uh out in the field uh as technologists and thanks for being with us here today. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.