Advancements in police technology have fundamentally changed how departments operate

Consider the technology that makes effective policing possible. Where would we be without the ability to conduct DNA testing—or even fingerprint suspects? How would police communicate and coordinate without computers? What about radios? This is technology that today’s law enforcement officers can take for granted, but it wasn’t always that way.

The truth is the technology involved in policing has evolved dramatically—even in just the past several years. From body-worn cameras and license plate recognition to artificial intelligence (AI)-based analytics and real-time crime centers, the tools and resources available to law enforcement are advancing at an incredible rate. AI-powered technologies are now providing law enforcement professionals with real-time situational awareness capabilities, serving as a key force multiplier that allows police to deploy resources more efficiently. As police technology grows, becoming both more advanced and more accessible, it’s important for departments to understand how to deploy that technology effectively to better protect the communities they serve.

How police technology has evolved
Perhaps the most obvious example of how far police technology has come is the simple fact that computers only first began appearing in police cruisers about 25 years ago. Before that, officers had to rely solely on radio to relay and receive information. There were no body-worn cameras, and there was certainly no cloud. If officers needed to record and submit video evidence, it had to be manually gathered and logged into evidence.

Today, body-worn cameras are mandatory in many agencies and are growing increasingly advanced. Body-worn video can be livestreamed and transcribed in real time, demonstrating how advancements in the software behind police technology are often more dramatic than advancements in the devices themselves. Increasingly powerful analytics like these are playing a critical role in helping law enforcement effectively perform their jobs.

Consider an incident last year in Georgia, when a gunman opened fire in an Atlanta medical facility and fled before police arrived at the scene. Not long ago, that gunman might have been able to evade capture indefinitely. Instead, his image was captured by one of the thousands of cameras monitored by the Atlanta Police Department and the license plate of his truck was picked up by a camera in Cobb County—nearly 15 miles away from the original shooting. Thanks to clear images, reliable analytics and collaboration between departments, the shooter was quickly apprehended.

That incident is the perfect example of how advancements in technology have led to more effective policing and safer communities. While security cameras have been around for decades, the advent of analytics capable of quickly and accurately recognizing colors, categorizing vehicles, or reading license plates has changed the game significantly. It would not have been reasonable for police to manually monitor almost 20,000 camera feeds in the hopes of spotting the suspect in Atlanta; instead, modern analytics automatically identified him and alerted local police, who were able to quickly apprehend him before he could cause further harm.

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