3 Ways Every Investigator Should Be Using AI Right Now

Collect video faster from the public
Review & search video
Create & share reports

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in almost every part of our lives. Instead of hailing cabs on the street corner, we now use Uber or Lyft. Instead of looking at the thermometer hanging on the porch, we ask Siri or Alexa what the weather’s like outside. AI can make every-day life easier and more productive. The same can be said for AI-powered video analytics as related to public safety and law enforcement.

Did you know that investigators and detectives spend more than a month of their working year, on average, sitting in front of a video monitor pressing play, stop, rewind and fast-forward? It’s only 1.5 – 3 hours a week, but after 52 weeks those hours add up. Not only does manual video review take up an undue portion of the investigator’s time, but it taxes the agency 1/12^th of this highly skilled and trained individual’s salary to do something that humans aren’t even made to do well. After only twenty minutes analyzing or reviewing video on a single screen, humans lose 95% of their visual perceptivity. Add a second screen for that operator to monitor, and the rate is cut in half.[i] The numbers just don’t make sense, especially when there are user-friendly, AI-powered solutions available to law enforcement and public safety.

Here are three ways every investigator and detective should be using AI-powered video analytics, right now, to make their jobs easier and more productive.

1. Physical video collection is a thing of the past

Allocating time and resources towards video review and surveillance is only part of the problem. The video first has to get into the detectives and investigators’ possession. How much time is spent in the field physically retrieving video? When canvassing a neighborhood, or trying to retrace a suspect’s movements throughout the city, officers are forced to physically be present at each business or home from which they wish to retrieve video. It’s even common practice for detectives to record surveillance video from the business’ security monitor itself, because sometimes the alternative is they would have to borrow the owner’s whole cctv device, and pay to replace it in the meantime.

Using Vintra’s FulcrumAI, investigators send a secure video upload url-link to the video owners, be they homeowners or large businesses. The video is uploaded directly into the project created within FulcrumAI. The video is then processed and becomes immediately searchable. Time is saved on both the collection and the review side. It also allows for exponentially more video to be reviewed, as human time isn’t wasted reviewing hours of footage that may lead to no clues.

See how one detective turned 743 hours of video into 4 hours of work and 1 felony case.

2. Make AI do the mindless tasks

If you had the choice between hand-washing the clothes for your family, including the kids’ dirty soccer clothes, or letting the machine in the laundry room do it for you, which would you choose? This isn’t a trick question. We would all choose the machine. So why do we choose to manually review hours and hours of footage, essentially looking for the needle in the haystack? Do we trust that the machine will get our clothes cleaner than we can? Do you trust that an AI-powered solution, which never tires, won’t experience video-blindness like we humans do after only twenty minutes? Using AI-powered software, every investigator can easily search hours of video for specific faces, people, color of clothes, gender, vehicles, vehicle subtypes, objects and more in a matter of minutes.All you have to do is load the video into the solution and let the AI do the wash for you.

3. It even writes the reports for you

So, you’ve poured through 150 hours of video in a fraction of the time thanks to AI. You bookmarked and saved 25 instances where your suspect was detected. Now you have to write up the report, detailing the exact video in which each detection was found, what time, and what each detection was comprised of. Again, why are we still doing this manually? With an AI-powered solution, like FulcrumAI, all of your saved detections and bookmarks are neatly compiled into a report that includes all of the necessary detail, including the exact video, time of appearance of each detection, and any notes the user has added to the detection. It even allows for the report to be shared digitally amongst colleagues. FulcrumAI takes it one step further and allows you to invite others from outside your department to view the report as well. How much sooner could a decision be made if the DA’s office was able to instantly access the report and, if you allow her to, see the corresponding detections in the actual video clips? With critical decisions needing to be made, every minute saved counts.

AI is not replacing investigators or detectives, it is empowering them do their jobs maximally, and be better utilized by the department. The few things detailed here, and much more, are available now for public safety and law enforcement thanks to FulcrumAI.

Interested in where AI is headed? Check out the White Paper: AI & the Future of Video Surveillance