How law enforcement is utilizing AI to sort through data

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Dashboard cameras, license plate readers, police have never had so much data at their fingertips. But how do they sift through it all to solve or stop crime? If it is all starting to remind you of the Minority Report >> Email, killer's mail, white 40s. Set up a [music] perimeter and tell me where on roof.

[00:00:16]>> You're not alone.

[00:00:17]>> A lot of this data is being collected whether or not the individual is going to be involved in a crime.

[00:00:25]>> to see what's possible once that infrastructure is in place.

[00:00:28]>> The debate raising fresh questions about where the line of privacy protections really is in the world of AI and when it might be offsides. As the country gears up for the World Cup, one of the largest security operations of the year, coast to coast. Nick Noon says his AI company Paragon is now operating in 400 US cities, 11 of which will be hosting World Cup events this summer.

[00:00:51]>> Working with those responders to bring together information to say this individual that might be entering the stadium has a history of violence related to a gun. That's the difference between having a secure event or a crisis.

[00:01:05]>> But it's not just the World Cup, Noon says his platform never goes to sleep.

[00:01:09]>> Police and fire departments are dealing with data that's streaming into their organizations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The The first thing to focus on for us is not AI, but how to take otherwise incompatible data and connect it together.

[00:01:28]>> What types of data then are we talking about?

[00:01:31]>> Reports that come from police departments, evidence such as body camera video, case information, uh 911 dispatch calls.

[00:01:39]>> It's part of a technological revolution they hope becomes as integrated with the beat cop as the uniform and badge.

[00:01:45]Police say in Virginia, photo of a man who abducted a little girl led them to identify him in 13 minutes because of the tech, which led to an arrest. In Arizona, shooting solved in minutes instead of days or weeks. And police say in Georgia, they're tracking drug overdoses to find where dealers are operating to try and save lives. Noon's co-founder Ben Rudolph says AI is making tech like this affordable to police departments big and small.

[00:02:11]>> We've seen a lot of organizations that have undergone massive technology changes. And one system and another system and a single place where they can get back to the the work that actually matters. It's It's cool to see.

[00:02:24]>> Peregrine isn't the only tech company hoping to harness AI to supercharge policing. The question privacy advocates have, will they cause more harm than good?

[00:02:33]>> Data is very leaky.

[00:02:34]>> Beryl Lipton tracks police tech for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[00:02:39]>> It is very difficult to ensure that data collected in one place is not going to be accessed inappropriately or shared far beyond where we expect that data to go.

[00:02:49]>> And with cameras everywhere from the streets to stadiums to theme parks, others are worried about tech getting things wrong. The ACLU tracked than a dozen cases of wrongful arrest after police relied on facial recognition that incorrectly identified suspects. NBC News covered one case.

[00:03:06]>> A Tennessee grandmother demanding justice after an AI tool falsely linked her to bank fraud.

[00:03:12]>> Peregrine not involved in that case, and Noon says he's not in the business of mass surveillance. In many ways that's already happening. He believes Peregrine can help law enforcement sort through it all and keep it secure.

[00:03:23]>> Peregrine is not a surveillance company.

[00:03:25]They look to companies like Peregrine to say, we need to secure that data. How could this be used against me in a in a nefarious way? If somebody has got a problem with my politics, if somebody has got a problem with me personally, how do you handle that challenge?

[00:03:39]>> If those systems are set up properly, then the information that's already being collected can be locked down to ensure that they're being utilized fairly, securely, transparently, and by the appropriate people.

[00:03:53]>> Working to stay ahead of the criminals while not sweeping up ordinary citizens in the process.

[00:03:59]>> Tom is here joining us now for more.

[00:04:01]It's super interesting, Tom. What about like local law enforcement, local towns, communities? How are they grappling with this?

[00:04:06]>> Yeah, so the experts that we've talked to say you want to consider a couple of different things. First, you want to consider how is this information, what type of information is coming in?

[00:04:13]Second, you want to consider what are the rights or the permissions that somebody has to look at it. What's the audit to make sure somebody is not looking at something that they shouldn't. And then the third is where is it being shared within my community, but is it being shared with other communities?

[00:04:26]>> It's so interesting cuz it does feel kind of like a microcosm of the whole AI debate that I think we're having nationally, societally, and globally as well.

[00:04:34]>> Well, exactly. I mean, you look at this and you see the amount of data that police departments have to work with and everything that's coming into them. They tell me it's almost too much. It's great that we have all this, but it's almost too much. And now that this can be applied and Parabon says, "Look, one of our best examples is when we told the police department, actually, that's not your suspect." And you might think that that person is the person who shot the other guy, but it's not and here's the reasons why. So, they see it as a way of of having that accuracy, but yeah, where does this all go? Remains the big AI question, too.

[00:05:02]>> Tom Winter, Tom, good to see you, pal.

[00:05:04]Thank you very much.

[00:05:05]>> We thank you for watching and remember, stay updated on breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or watch live on our YouTube channel.