New California laws mandating timely public access to police video and audio communications are heaping massive cost burdens on state agencies, with one department recently warning it will cost more than $350,000 to review and redact its use of force cases. Driving this price tag is the cost associated with the review of video and the subsequent redaction of personally identifiable information contained within it. Agencies require special software typically used by professional video editors and specially trained staff to carefully manually review both the video and audio recordings for sensitive information, such as innocent faces captured by bodycams. However, there’s good news for police agencies, with the arrival of cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions that can dramatically cut the costs of collecting, reviewing and redacting video and audio for public disclosure.
Let’s take a look at the challenges facing California law enforcement agencies and how AI can help allow them to meet the time demands of the new state disclosure legislation while minimizing costs.