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Chief constable Trevor Rodenhurst (Bedfordshire Police)<\/p>\n\u2018Small but mighty,\u2019 is how Baroness Casey described Bedfordshire\u00a0Police\u00a0when she released her report on grooming gangs over the summer. She told MPs that most forces had failed to properly record child abuse. \u2018A bloody disaster, frankly\u2019. But Bedfordshire is different. They\u2019re using artificial intelligence so\u00a0police\u00a0can spend more time hunting criminals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I didn\u2019t know about Louise Casey\u2019s comments until you contacted us,\u2019 says Trevor Rodenhurst, the chief constable of the county. That\u2019s unsurprising. Rodenhurst is a busy man. We meet in his office on the outskirts of Bedford, under an official portrait of the King; behind his computer is his ceremonial tipstaff and photographs of his children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Rodenhurst took over in 2023, he found that 80 per cent of his officers\u2019 time was spent on admin and paperwork. The remaining one day a week went to proper policing. His job, as he sees it, is to invert that 80\/20 ratio and get officers back on the streets. Much of the paperwork was redactions for the Crown Prosecution Service. \u2018It\u2019s a requirement under current attorney general guidance,\u2019 he says with a flicker of frustration. Already Rodenhurst has introduced an automated redaction software. Documents that were taking days to process are now being completed in just a few seconds. It sounds dull, but the results are impressive. \u2018We calculated that the work hours this saved is the equivalent of about ten people\u2019s time per year, which is huge.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is huge, especially for a constabulary that has half the detectives it needs. When the Inspectorate visited two years ago, they found a single officer working on 29 different crimes, 18 of which were rapes. Luton, a centre of child sex abuse, is \u2018like a small London borough\u2019. And yet the county has 204 officers per 100,000 residents, below the national average and well below the Met\u2019s 398. The area is a hotspot for county lines drug dealing and has nearly 50 organised crime groups, more than any other in the region. \u2018If you look at demand on the service, it\u2019s only increasing. We know that financially, resources can\u2019t match that demand. Leaders like myself have to make choices. We needed to find a way of overcoming our problems.\u2019 Down the hall from Rodenhurst\u2019s office are the men\u2019s toilets. The broken hand dryer is taped off and a note above the sink complains that it\u2019s been blocked by green beans and pasta. Beds HQ isn\u2019t exactly run down, but it\u2019s hardly cutting edge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead of shiny new kit, Rodenhurst is developing digital tools for modern policing, as effective as the handcuffs and truncheons of the 19th century. Already the redaction software has boosted morale for his stretched officers, who joined to catch criminals, not to push paper. But this is just the start.\u00a0Bedfordshire is transforming into Britain\u2019s first RoboCop constabulary. <\/p>\n
At the moment, if someone calls 999, the patrol car sent to help them is equipped with a radio, a satnav and little else. \u2018It doesn\u2019t feel that different from when I was doing it, other than the car might be automatic.\u2019 Officers are currently taking calls, typing in postcodes, all while trying to figure out what exactly they\u2019re headed into. It can be frantic. Rodenhurst wants to install iPads that give officers an\u00a0AI\u00a0briefing. On screen will be an automatic summary of all the previous records on the address, the audio file of the 999 call and context about the general goings-on in the neighbourhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Imagine an officer has been called to a street after reports of an argument. That might not mean much to a new constable hopping into his car. But the chief wants\u00a0AI\u00a0to alert squad cars to files that might mention context like domestic abuse. That rookie copper is suddenly primed to notice things he otherwise wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018At the moment, officers are relying on a control room radio operator to tell them this. But that control room operator might be running the channel for an entire town.\u2019 Giving officers all that information, without having to call someone in HQ, saves time. \u2018That might mean that we get there a couple of minutes quicker. This is about making marginal gains in lots of places.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more they can do with the software. The iPad might tell officers that next door is the last known address of one of the county\u2019s most-wanted criminals. Why not check to see if he\u2019s there? Rodenhurst wants the system to track squad cars, sending in relevant information in real time \u2013 there was anti-social behaviour at your location last week, or reports of a convict breaching his bail in the nearby park. Oh, and here\u2019s his on-file mugshot, automatically beamed into the car. I detect an\u00a0air of satisfaction in Rodenhurst as he tells me about his plans. Building this system, he says, is \u2018the challenge we\u2019ve set ourselves for the next 12 months\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chief constable Trevor Rodenhurst (Bedfordshire Police)<\/p>\n
Behind this iPad is something Bedfordshire has already built. Officers are now using an\u00a0AI\u00a0that ties together multiple legacy databases \u2013 \u2018there are dozens and dozens of systems\u2019 \u2013 in which information is regularly lost in a web of servers. With this new\u00a0AI\u00a0dashboard, officers can simply ask a question and a bot scans every system, giving an answer much like ChatGPT. All the relevant information is pulled up in seconds, regardless of where it\u2019s hiding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rodenhurst tells me this has already dramatically improved policing. Under a piece of legislation called Clare\u2019s Law, the\u00a0police\u00a0are expected to tell the new partner of a domestic abuser about his criminal history if they think she\u2019s at risk. The problem was that with all those databases it was difficult to know what was going on. Now the dashboard is constantly scanning for information. \u2018The moment we switched that on, it immediately alerted us to 70 people we needed to contact.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a worry that such systems could go haywire, imagining case notes that simply don\u2019t exist. When I asked the\u00a0police\u00a0press officer about hallucinations, where\u00a0AI\u00a0invents information to satisfy the user, he laughed, unaware that machines did such things. But Rodenhurst tells me that every decision is still made by a human being. The difference is that information appears in front of them, rather than them having to go digging within a Dell computer from 1998. If the officer decides to act, he still needs to review all of those case files and be sure what the system is telling him is true.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all about speed. Those marginal gains that free up time for hitting pavements and crims. Take Bedfordshire\u2019s digital lab trucks, which can scrape phones and laptops for data on site. Before, officers had to package up devices and send them off to digital forensics. For the Met in London, that process takes an average of 267 days to complete. More waiting. More phone calls. More delays. Rodenhurst tells me about a gang his officers recently arrested; they had their phones scraped in one of the vans. \u2018Within moments and through terabytes of data, it brought back chat logs \u2013 in Romanian, which it translated to English \u2013 about the purchase of illegal firearms, drugs, all sorts of criminality. You can imagine the human trawl to do that.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nEverything is about flipping that 80\/20 ratio back in the direction of real policing<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Everything is about flipping that 80\/20 ratio back in the direction of real policing. At a recent gas explosion, six officers were needed to guard the crime scene, 24 hours a day. Bedfordshire is developing drones with thermal imaging that will constantly hover overhead and tethered to the earth so they don\u2019t fly away. \u2018Anything moves in, it tells you. Instead of half a dozen officers we\u2019ll have one officer, not standing in the rain but sitting in a car, monitoring the situation.\u2019 That idea came from a staff member. Rodenhurst runs annual\u00a0Dragon\u2019s Den\u00a0events where his staff are invited to pitch ideas to speed up their work. \u2018The guarantee is, if you win, we\u2019re going to help you bring that idea to life. It won\u2019t be right for every crime scene, but again it\u2019s about those marginal gains.\u2019<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been working with Palantir, Peter Theil\u2019s controversial tech firm. The company has been accused of helping Trump\u2019s ICE agents find illegals, developing an IDF algorithm that estimates the presence of terrorists for strikes on Gaza, not to mention its role in building the NHS Covid vaccine app. I raise an eyebrow. \u2018This is not about a company, it\u2019s about capability,\u2019 he says. \u2018We\u2019ve had vetted engineers sit alongside our operators and crime analysts who say, \u201cTell me what it is you\u2019re looking for\u201d. They have created this dashboard that enables my staff to answer those questions, but without going into all those different systems.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
I look down at his chunky smart watch and ask whether he\u2019s a techie. He gives me a weary look. \u2018What excites me is seeing staff \u2013 who we\u2019ve almost asked the impossible of \u2013 and transforming their daily experience, so they actually feel that they\u2019re doing the job that they signed up for.\u2019 Much of the subtext of our conversation is about state failure. \u2018The thinking in policing for too long has been \u201cwhat we need is a new system,\u00a0the\u00a0system.\u201d And then someone will go and spend a lot of money and multiple years at the Home Office developing it. By the time it\u2019s finished, it\u2019s overrun, it\u2019s overcost, and our staff say, \u201cthat\u2019s not what we needed.\u201d\u2019 So Rodenhurst is building these tools himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m both impressed and aghast. Impressed to find a public servant who is willing to pull up his sleeves rather than begging for ever more cash. Aghast, because this kind of thinking is rare in the public sector. I ask him whether he\u2019s had any interest from national government. \u2018I understand there is a team set up at the Home Office looking at these sorts of capabilities for policing.\u2019 That doesn\u2019t sound promising. If I ran the Home Office, I\u2019d permanently deploy my own digital lab truck to the car park, scraping information from this small but mighty office on the outskirts of Bedford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Small but mighty,\u2019 is how Baroness Casey described Bedfordshire\u00a0Police\u00a0when she released her report on grooming gangs over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-437857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115235075075038355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}