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Old Westbury police department AI body cam controversy
The Old Westbury Police Department is testing out AI body cams, but not everyone is in favor of the idea. FOX 5 NY's Jodi Goldberg has the latest.
LONG ISLAND - Old Westbury Police Department is incorporating AI-enhanced body cameras to allow officers to focus on the scene, but critics are wary of reliability issues it may cause.
AI-enhanced body cameras
What we know:
This software can translate more than 50 languages, transcribe, answer policy questions and assist in making police reports, FOX 5 NY's Jodi Goldberg reports.
At the moment, police officers can call a translation line or borrow an interpreter, sometimes without understanding the language. AI tools would detect and translate the conversation, which can help avoid potentially dangerous situations, said Chief Stuart Cameron of Old Westbury Police Department.
The tool assists in creating police reports by transcribing incidents and generating a draft for an officer to review. In addition, a policy chat feature allows officers to ask any question about the department's 800-page manual.
"I type in a question, ‘when do I have to turn on my body camera?’ It gives me an immediate answer to my question," Chief Cameron explained to Goldberg.
If the department decides to move forward with the tool, grant money would be used and AI use would be monitored, said Chief Cameron.
An example of a body camera worn by police officers. (FOX 5 NY file)
The other side:
Critics raise concerns about reliability issues this software could pose.
"We want to capture the officers' firsthand experience of what they went through and not just rely on a rehash of the body camera audio from AI," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, told Goldberg.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues its concern in four positions: problems with AI itself, issues around evidence, lack of transparency and loss of accountability.
In a paper published in 2024, Stanley wrote that AI is biased, and the program has the potential to spin things in subtle ways an officer may not notice.
The police report — which would be an AI rehash of the body camera video — may write over details that an officer might have otherwise recorded, Stanley claims.
The paper raises concerns about the lack of transparency on the technology, and also references police reports force officers to write down the reasons behind their use of power, which serves as a reminder of the legal limits to their authority.
The Source: This article uses reporting by FOX 5 NY's Jodi Goldberg and information from a paper published by the senior policy analyst at the ACLU.