AI Is Moving Into the Heart of American Policing, and Almost Nobody Is Watching
From facial-recognition cameras to AI systems that decide where officers go next, a booming industry is selling police departments tools that experts warn could make accountability much harder.
Key points
- The International Association of Chiefs of Police Technology Conference in Fort Worth, Texas in May 2026 showcased AI tools including facial-recognition cameras, drone fleets, gunshot-detection platforms, and automated report-writing software.
- Real-time crime centres, or RTCCs, systems that pull together data from cameras, licence-plate readers, and 911 logs into a single AI-managed dashboard, are now being sold to departments across the country.
- By 2019, the New York City Police Department was collecting roughly two years' worth of body-camera footage every single week, according to a 2019 Committee on Public Safety hearing transcript.
- Axon Enterprise, originally the company behind the TASER stun gun, acquired surveillance firm Fusus in early 2024 to launch its own AI-powered RTCC called Axon Fusus.
- Critics including a fellow at the New York University Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law say earlier data-driven policing tools failed to prevent violent encounters, and there is little reason to believe this new wave will be different.
I want you to picture a wall covered in screens. Each one shows a different camera feed: a street corner, a car park, a school gate. Below the screens, an AI system, software that pulls all those feeds together and flags what it thinks matters, quietly decides which patrol car to send where. Nobody voted on this. Most people in the neighbourhood have no idea it exists.
That is the product being sold to police departments right now.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police Technology Conference drew thousands of attendees to Fort Worth, Texas this past May. The showroom floor, as reported by The Verge, offered facial-recognition cameras, body cameras, chatbots to handle non-emergency 911 calls, gunshot-detection microphones, drones, and AI tools that write police reports automatically. The pitch was familiar: let the machine handle the paperwork so officers can focus on real police work.
The problem is that police paperwork is not really busywork. Writing a careful arrest report, reviewing a suspect's history, deciding how to word a charge: these steps sit at the centre of the legal process. Automate them carelessly and real people face real consequences.
The centrepiece of the conference was a category of software called a real-time crime centre, or RTCC. Think of it as an AI control room. It hoovers up data from cameras, licence-plate readers, 911 dispatch logs, even parole records, and churns out a summary for officers before they arrive at a scene. The idea is to replace gut instinct with hard data.
New York City's police department pioneered the concept more than 20 years ago using human analysts. But the data volumes have since grown beyond what any team of humans can track. By 2019, the NYPD was generating roughly two years' worth of body-camera footage every week.
Companies including ForceMetrics, with its RTCC product called Velocity, plus tech giants Motorola Solutions and Axon Enterprise are now competing to supply these AI brains to departments nationwide. Axon, the company behind the original TASER, bought surveillance firm Fusus in early 2024 and rebranded its RTCC as Axon Fusus. It also sells body cameras, licence-plate readers, an AI report-writer called Draft One, and a drone programme called Axon Air. The goal, critics say, is to own the entire technology stack from data collection to decision-making.
Should ordinary people be worried?
Yes, in a practical sense, because there is almost no federal oversight of how these tools work or what they get wrong. Abrem Ayana, a police captain in Brookhaven, Georgia, told reporters that much of it amounts to sales gimmicks, yet departments often have to take companies at their word because no independent standards exist. Nina Loshkajian, a fellow at the NYU Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, put it plainly: earlier data-driven policing tools did not prevent violent encounters between police and the public, and there is no strong evidence the new generation will either.
If you live somewhere that uses these systems, you have a right to ask your local council or police board which AI tools are in use, what data they collect, and who audits them. That question alone tends to get things moving.
