Police need technology today more than at any point I can remember in my career. At the same time, some of the very tools that are helping officers do their jobs and making our communities safer are coming under increasing public and political scrutiny. Questions about privacy, access, information sharing and oversight have moved quickly from police departments into city halls and statehouses. Some of those concerns are legitimate and should be addressed. Others, I believe, come from people simply not understanding how these systems are actually being used. Either way, there is a lesson here for policing.
Having good technology is no longer enough. We have to do a much better job explaining why we need it, how we intend to use it and what safeguards are in place. If we don’t, we run the risk of losing important capabilities not because they don’t work, but because we failed to build public confidence around them. We have been down this road before.
After September 11, fusion centers emerged across the country to address one of the most serious weaknesses exposed by the attacks: our inability to effectively share information across agencies and jurisdictions. But fusion centers also generated questions. To someone outside law enforcement, even the name could sound a little ominous. What exactly was being “fused”?
Those were legitimate questions and, over time, the fusion-center network got much better at answering them. Privacy, civil-rights and civil-liberties protections became part of how these centers operated. Governance became clearer, policies became more accessible, and elected officials and community stakeholders had more opportunities to understand what was actually happening inside. My friend Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association and one of the most respected fusion-center leaders in the country, has spent much of his career dealing with that balance — making sure law enforcement has the information it needs while protecting the rights of the people we serve. He dedicated a vast amount of his time demystifying the fusion centers and likewise used this as one of his associations core missions.
There is a lesson in that experience that we should remember today. If we don’t explain a police capability, someone else eventually will, and their explanation may bear very little resemblance to how the technology is actually being used. That is going to become increasingly important as drones, artificial intelligence, real-time crime centers, camera systems and technologies we haven’t even contemplated become a larger part of policing.
The case: Elizabeth, New Jersey
Which brings me to Elizabeth, New Jersey. I have known Chief Giacomo Sacca for years. I know him as a police leader, and I have watched what he and the Elizabeth Police Department have built. I believe there are lessons in Elizabeth that deserve much more national attention. Elizabeth is a large, diverse and complicated city to police. Sacca oversees more than 365 sworn officers dealing with everything you would expect in a busy urban environment: violent crime, missing persons, fires, major events, traffic, emergency calls and the continuing pressure to do more with available resources.
Elizabeth was also early to drones. The department received FAA authorization in 2018 and built a dedicated capability with trained pilots from patrol, detectives and emergency services. That program has continued to grow, and drones are now used across a wide range of public-safety missions. The reason is pretty simple. If you can get eyes on an incident before putting an officer into it, why wouldn’t you? Give the officer and the commander a better understanding of what they are dealing with before making decisions. Sometimes that means police can move faster, and sometimes it means they don’t have to. Anyone who has spent time on the street understands the value of both.
Let people see the technology
But what I find most interesting about Elizabeth isn’t the drone. It is what Sacca and his department have done around it. We in policing understand why we need these capabilities because we deal every day with the problems they are intended to solve. The person looking out the window and seeing a police drone above the neighborhood may see it very differently. Why is it there? What can it see? Who is flying it? What happens to the video? Those aren’t unreasonable questions.
Sacca didn’t try to answer those questions with a brochure or simply tell residents they should trust the police department. He let people see the technology being used and, importantly, not every use was about enforcement. As Sacca told me: “Public acceptance of technology develops when people see that it is being used for them. We use the technology not only to address crime and quality-of-life issues, but to showcase our community. We film parades and public events and share those videos through social media. People get to see the same technology being used to celebrate their neighborhoods and their city. That changes how they look at it.”
Sacca makes an important point. We spend a lot of time telling people what police technology can do when something goes wrong. Elizabeth is also showing people what it can do when something is going right. A drone isn’t only appearing over a neighborhood during a critical incident. It may be there for a parade, a community event or a celebration. Residents see the images, families share them, and the technology becomes familiar rather than something that suddenly appears overhead when police activity occurs.
UAS Vacation Watch
Elizabeth then took that idea further with its UAS Vacation Watch program. Residents who are leaving town can voluntarily request that certified Elizabeth officers conduct periodic exterior drone checks of their homes. I find that fascinating because of what it says about the relationship between the department, the community and the technology. The same capability that might initially cause someone to ask why a police drone is flying over the neighborhood is now something residents are requesting to help protect their own homes. You don’t get there by telling people to trust technology. You get there by giving them reasons to trust the people using it.
The next generation
Sacca is now taking the same approach with young people. Through the Police Athletic League, Elizabeth is working with Draganfly to introduce kids to drones and teach them how the technology can be flown and used for public safety. This may be one of my favorite parts of the program because PAL has connected cops and kids for generations, usually through basketball, baseball, boxing, mentoring and other traditional activities. Why shouldn’t that relationship evolve along with policing?
A kid who might otherwise look into the sky and wonder what a police drone is doing can now learn how to fly one. He or she can learn about aviation, engineering, technology and public safety while spending time with police officers in an entirely different environment. Some of those kids may eventually pursue careers in aviation, engineering, emergency services or policing. Others won’t. But they will understand the technology and, perhaps more importantly, they will know some of the officers behind it.
Rules first
That, to me, is community policing, and there is another side of the Elizabeth story that is just as important. The department didn’t simply buy drones and start flying them. It put policy around the program years ago, established parameters for deployment and required trained and authorized personnel to operate the aircraft. Its Vacation Watch program is voluntary and limited to exterior observations. That may not be the exciting part of police technology, but it is an essential part of keeping it.
What other agencies can take from this
We learned that lesson with fusion centers. We are seeing it again with camera systems, and we will undoubtedly confront the same issues with artificial intelligence, real-time crime centers and whatever comes next. Police executives cannot wait until there is a controversy to begin explaining what they are doing. Invite elected officials in, talk to community leaders, publish the policies that can be published, explain what information is being collected, what isn’t, who can access it and what protections exist. Most importantly, show people what the technology is accomplishing. None of that weakens policing. In my view, it protects our ability to police.
There is also something very traditional about all of this. I came into policing when the walking beat still meant something. Moving officers increasingly into patrol cars certainly made policing more efficient, but we lost something along the way. We lost some of that everyday human connection between a cop and the people who lived and worked on that beat. Technology can create the same problem if we aren’t careful. Cameras, screens, artificial intelligence and remotely operated systems can put even more distance between the officer and the community.
What Elizabeth is demonstrating is that technology can also be used to create a connection. A drone filming a community parade, a resident asking the police department to use that same drone to check on a home while the family is away, or a kid learning to fly one alongside a police officer at PAL may look like technology programs, but underneath them is something policing has always depended upon: relationships.
The technology changes, but policing really doesn’t. People still want to know their police department. They want to understand what we are doing and why, and they want to know that the enormous capabilities technology now gives us are being used responsibly and, most importantly, for their benefit.
Chief Giacomo Sacca and the Elizabeth Police Department are showing one way forward. Put the rules in place, explain what you are doing, let people see the technology work, find ways for them to benefit from it and, when you can, bring the next generation into the process.
There will be another controversy after cameras, and there will be another technology that people don’t understand or are uncomfortable with. That is inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is losing public confidence in it. That part is up to us.
And that is the trust equation.
