Controversy is not new to the adoption and use of technology in law enforcement. For Mike Ricupero, former commander of the NYPD Real Time Crime Center, the criticism and debate about license plate reader cameras and software are familiar from the NYPD’s experience implementing facial recognition and launching the CONNECT NEW YORK video-sharing program.
In this Police1 interview, Ricupero draws on his experience and shares lessons police leaders can take from previous technology implementations. He emphasizes the importance of understanding how technology works, explaining a department’s use cases, communicating facts to department leaders, elected officials and citizens, and hosting or attending open forums to answer questions and address concerns.
Ricupero’s responses were lightly edited for clarity and flow and include additional information he provided following the interview.
Police1: In the current debate about ALPRs, what mistakes are police leaders making when they are trying to explain and justify this technology to elected officials and citizens?
Mike Ricupero: Police chiefs have to understand the technology they’re championing. It’s not enough to say, “I want to implement LPRs because the next town is doing a great job with them and it’s cutting crime.”
Transparency matters, too. In New York, the City Council mandated the POST Act (Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act), which requires the NYPD to be open with the community about how it uses surveillance technology it wants to implement. Look at the impact and use policies we published every time we implemented something.
It’s important to have these discussions in an open forum, because there’s a lot of false information out there about some technology.
Police1: What about this current debate over ALPRs, as well as drones and AI, is familiar to your experience with facial recognition and other technologies in New York City?
Ricupero: When you implement technology, you’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to learn from them.
We’ve had facial recognition in the NYPD since 2011. Almost 15 years later, it’s being used correctly, with safeguards and audit trails to make sure detectives use it the way it’s meant to be used.
Facial recognition is not probable cause for an arrest. It only generates a lead for the detective assigned to the case. It’s the detective’s burden to prove that this person was at this place at that time and to establish probable cause for the arrest.
Police1: You mentioned that there were some mistakes early on with the adoption of facial recognition technology. What were some of those mistakes and what did the department learn from those mistakes?
Ricupero: It wasn’t so much mistakes as learning. The city wanted to use this technology at that time to combat crime, and facial recognition gives officers and detectives hope that they can generate a lead from a face.
We use official police photos taken at the time of a previous arrest. We don’t scrape the internet. We’re not guessing. If we ever used another database for photos, that approval had to come from the highest ranking police executive in the department and it had to be documented in the case.
We also use an investigative checklist. Where was this person at the time of the crime? Did they live in New York? Were they incarcerated? Were they in the hospital? Were they in another country?
Police1: What did the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies get right and wrong in explaining technologies, including facial recognition, and what those technologies can or can’t do?
Ricupero: If you want to implement new technology, you have to do your homework. You have to do your research and speak to your peers.
When we implemented CONNECT NEW YORK, a voluntary program allowing businesses to share their cameras with first responders, we spoke to 30 police agencies that had similar programs. They gave great reviews, and that meant a lot, because these are people with no affiliation with the tech companies who have the same job: to catch criminals and save lives.
I also had a playbook that changed depending on the crowd. If I’m going to a high school, I make it simple. If I’m going in front of the police commissioner, chiefs or elected officials, I go deep into how the technology works, how we use it and how we train our investigators.
For facial recognition in the Real Time Crime Center, we had three parts to our training: an FBI class, in-house training and third-party training. It made our investigators better at what they do.
Training is something people don’t invest enough in. You can’t just open a box of software and point and click. Officers want to learn the right way to be efficient in their jobs.
Police1: Can you think of some of the new technology criticisms that law enforcement initially pushed back on but ultimately needed to take seriously?
Ricupero: Sometimes you have to go the extra mile and explain to the city council why you want a technology, even if you’re going to face a lot of criticism. Why do you want to use it? What are you trying to do to fight crime and help detectives?
I would never give hypotheticals. I always gave facts: how the technology is used, how many people are using it, where it’s effective and the origin of the company. You have to explain it in a way they’ll understand.
Police1: Can you think of specific examples where you received criticism or scrutiny and that led to better or different policy, training, oversight or safeguards?
Ricupero: The best way to fight criticism is open forums, like the ones I held for CONNECT NEW YORK with the mayor’s office. I went to communities and pitched them the vision. That’s part of being transparent with the public. It’s their right to question, and I love those questions. I just answered them truthfully.
Every time you talk with the public, a vendor or another agency, you’re going to learn something you didn’t know. Take that feedback, positive or negative, to your executives and ask, “How can we help?”
Police1: What can Police1 readers, who are law enforcement leaders in communities of all sizes, do to inform their citizenry about the department’s numerous technologies and policies governing their use?
Ricupero: I don’t think it needs to be rushed. Get legal involved, along with the people who know the technology, to explain it to the public.
Put up stats and numbers. At the NYPD, we released CompStat numbers weekly, and that held commanders and chiefs accountable for how they were handling crimes and cases.
Tech companies also have a responsibility to create audit logs so someone like me can see how the technology is being used.
Retention periods are for police executives or the city to decide. Tech companies shouldn’t tell cities how long they can keep data. It’s our responsibility to say, “We’re going to save this for 30 days, and after that it’s going to be erased.”
Can you imagine only having seven days for retention? With LPR, I’ve gone back two or three years on cases. Seven days isn’t reasonable, because sometimes new information comes into a case and you need to run a plate after that window has closed. Cities and police departments should set their own policies, and the vendor shouldn’t influence that.
Police1: Of the technology that’s available today, which would have been most useful to you as the commanding officer of the NYPD RTCC?
Ricupero: That’s a hard question. I tell people that I love old technology. Organized data is the most important thing you have, not in silos but together so you can search it fast. That’s more important than anything else. It’s how we solve cases, based on data that can go back 20 years.
