The Spokane County , Sheriff’s Office , has recorded thousands of hours of footage captured by its delegates ‘ body camcorders, making it nearly impossible for the company to review every customers stop, security check or reply to a murder scene.
That’s a reason the organization selected artificial intelligence to handle the large raising of reviewing the images to assess the effectiveness of state representatives ‘ training.
The Spokane County Commission  , voted unanimously Tuesday to accept a nearly$ 1 million grant from the , U. S. Department of Justice , that will be used to analyze footage from body cameras worn by county deputies.
For the next three years, an AI and data management system called” TrustStat” will comb through recorded relations between the representatives and the public, with a special focus on identifying “key manners and terminology related to de-escalation, use of power, and other important areas of assistant performance”, according to a media release from the , Justice Department.
Spokane County , Sheriff , John Nowels , said the agency is likely the first in the country to apply the software specifically to a review of training practices. He added that the program is a component of the organization’s ongoing efforts to improve procedures, foster community trust, and create better deputies.
” My interest has always been human performance”, Nowels said. In every way,” How do we make the most professional law enforcement officers we can” How can we motivate people to perform even better?
Nowels expressed optimism that the program will yield empirical evidence of how effective tactics and training are, and that the outcomes will have an impact on how law enforcement practices are conducted nationwide.
TrustStat, a software developed by , Dallas-based Polis Solutions, is an analysis tool already used by a handful of law enforcement agencies across the country, including agencies in the company’s hometown, in , St. Petersburg, Florida,  , Kinston, North Carolina, and , Alliance, Nebraska, as reported by ProPublica.
The software was born out of a former research project of the , U. S. Defense Department , called the Strategic Social Interaction Modules program, nicknamed” Good Stranger”, which sought to better train soldiers for modern warfare in which they need to rely on social skills to de-escalate terse situations or navigate uncertain circumstances.
The$ 40 million research project was workshopped at , Fairchild Air Force Base , with some , Washington , law enforcement officers and former military members more than a decade ago, as reported by NBC News. Polis Solutions, whose founder is a former Defense Department employee, trained the TrustStat software on the program’s database.
Nowels said part of the reason TrustStat was selected as the vendor is an existing relationship with the , Sheriff’s Office ‘s , Training Director , Tony Anderman, who participated in the , Defense Department ‘s , project.
According to ProPublica, TrustStat is completely automated: Large language models analyze speech, and image-processing algorithms identify physical movements and facial expressions that have been recorded on video.
According to Nowels, the artificial intelligence will use data from actual interactions to compare deputy officers ‘ emotional responses to their interactions, starting with a baseline reading from the agency’s training, which will then be compared to data collected from actual interactions.
According to Nowels, TrustStat will look at things like voice intonation, inflection, and body position to assess what emotions might be present in the deputy and the people they are interfering with.
The software won’t be able to determine whether a deputy’s use of force was justified, whether someone who was contacted by deputies or the deputies themselves acted legally, or whether there had been any policy or conduct violations. The grant’s language limits its use to a review of training practices, Nowels said.
” I know there’s a lot of people who want to say,’ This artificial machine is going to catch deputies behaving badly,’ or it’s going to catch themselves behaving badly”, Nowels said. Let me be very clear: that is not what it is intended to do, and that is not what we’re going to do with it.
Nowels said that doesn’t mean he won’t take appropriate action if violations are found through the analysis.
The tasks of determining what all the agency hopes to answer about its training practices, reviewing the findings and taking actionable steps will fall on a board of , Sheriff’s Office , deputies ranging from the rank and file to top command officers, which is yet to be finalized, Nowels said.
Some of those questions will likely key in on use-of-force incidents, like what common factors the events share, what emotions were present and how the agency’s response could have been improved. According to Nowels, the county may have empirical data to show that effect in the years to come.
” But for the moment, it’s about how do we evaluate the training models that we’re using to make sure that the information we’re giving to our deputies is received, ingrained into their behavior, and retained once they’re out on the street,” Nowels said.
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