Axon, the company formerly known as Taser and which supplies most of the police body cameras, has some new tech tools for cops that could cut paperwork and improve response times. But at a time when fundamental means and the mission of the police are being questioned, is this what is really needed? The company's CEO also has reservations.
The new products Axon is supplying will undoubtedly be useful for police and emergency personnel across the country. The first is the ability to automatically transcribe voices onto body camera footage (using machine learning, of course). As someone who deals with a lot of spoken content, I am easy to convince of the usefulness of such a tool.
One of the things that body cams do is produce a log of officers' interactions that need to be sorted and cited in an organized way, but doing so is largely a matter of hand rubbing through the video to notice that this or that exchange is happened at this or that moment, again and again. By providing a rough transcript right away, important events can be found and listed quickly, saving you time and effort.
The hard word, though: Smith was clear that this was to be a transcription aid, not to produce court-ready documents. But the company "has tried to design products that have value given today's precision."
I was concerned that this service, like others I have seen, might have higher error rates for people whose language patterns differ from those in the training set. If there are no people with Puerto Rican or Southern accents in the training data, or people using local slang or dialects, they get worse treatment from the algorithm. Smith noted that they licensed their speech recognition algorithm and tested it on real-world data before choosing it, but didn't have much to say about maintaining a diverse dataset to nip prejudice in the bud. Even if they haven't written the algorithm, it's important for both ethical and practical reasons, so hopefully the company will look into it.
The other new element of Axon is a system aimed at integrating the disparate tools used in the emergency service and criminal police centers.
"There is a radio system, a call system for routing, dispatch software, dispatcher usually furiously types notes in such as a command line interface in the software, they are communicating with field officers via a push to talk radio and it's not a dedicated channel. I was impressed that these people do their jobs with such a thin tube, "Smith said. "These systems are not integrated - they could be in completely different buildings. It looks like a lot of human glue and is expensive and complicated. We see all of this coming together. "
Its "Axon Respond" software helps put this within reach of a contractor, along with relevant data such as whether an officer in the area is available, what their experience is and so on. Surely anything that can make an emergency call smoother and get the right resources in the right position would be welcome.
You can share their insight in the following concept video: the tools are in development but not ready to be filmed yet, it seems.
It's not just about getting more cops faster, though that's an option.
"We have a client who tries to use our live stream not for tactical purposes, but to get a live mental health professional, to provide an assessment of the person," Smith noted. "We could potentially have a very different outcome when you have a trained professional versus a guy with a gun and a stick."
More tools, more abuse?
It all sounds very nice, except that the country is currently in the throes of a serious crisis due to the police abusing their authority and the tools they have at their disposal: guns, sticks, is body cameras.
One major criticism of body cameras is that while they are ostensibly to provide accountability, police departments actually use them and the footage they capture very sparingly, holding them back if cops look bad and advertising them if it promotes their favorite narrative. I've seen it happen in person, so this is no longer a theorist to me, and I asked Smith what he thought about it. He didn't deny that this happened, but he didn't agree that the technology is a stark negative.
"Technology is not a panacea," he said. "It won't solve these problems for us. But how will you solve some of these problems without body cameras? People say the body cameras didn't prevent George Floyd's death, and that's true. But I think George Floyd's accident will lead to a more lasting change because there were body cameras. If they weren't, I don't know we would see the energy of police chiefs across the country that we are. You're seeing law enforcement leaders across the country saying, 'It was wrong. They killed George Floyd. you never look that. The police do not come forward and do not criticize their peers. But in this case there was enough evidence. "
Certainly the camera footage of the body made the behavior of the agents who killed Floyd clearer. But the obvious contrast to this is that if bystanders hadn't filmed the meeting in the first place, there's a good chance the camera footage would never have been seen publicly. Even with half of the country requesting it, the video had to be practically snatched from the department's hands.
The idea, however, that Axon is preparing for the law enforcement roles of the future by selling the tools for them today. But if, as I invited Smith to imagine, many of the major police departments are faced with defunding or significant cuts and restructuring, as seems likely in the next decade, where will Axon go?
"We aspire to be adaptable to others in this space," Smith said. "The way the government buys technology has not rewarded agile companies but those who know how to manage a complex purchasing system. We deliberately avoided it because we believe it is a great way to reconstruct the exact same problems we have today. "
"I said, why don't we do it with a clean sheet of paper and take the risk? And if it's better, our customers will find a way to buy it, "he continued. "When we started building cloud software in 2009, our customers told us it was illegal for them to use it, so the next two years were a series of "hell no". But now for 90% of agencies it is much safer. So let's build things for the emerging world. These catalysts present challenges, but also opportunities. "
