AI - Not a Good Thing in Law Enforcement

 A few years ago I received a confidential call from my police detective son. Someone had broken into the home of my elderly widowed neighbor at the end of our street and stolen her wedding rings while she was at church. 

He wanted to know if I knew who had security cameras so the police department could review them. I contacted every neighbor and located two, but footage did not help. 

The end of the story has two parts.  The thief was stopped on a traffic infraction and had jewelry from my neighbor and two other elderly victims in his car. He was the boyfriend of their home health worker. He was tried and convicted of these crimes and a bunch of drug charges.

The second part is that a lot of my neighbors and my husband purchased security cameras.  Ours are used mainly for watching deer eat my lettuce, skunks hang out on my front porch after dark and raccoons being thwarted by my husband's homemade trash can containment system. 

The detective contacted me early Thursday morning. We live off Main St and not far from the local Knights of Columbus which also houses the American Legion Hall. He had a photo from their security footage of a man in a hoodie who had broken in and robbed safes.  He asked me to ask my neighbors (on the down-low) if anyone captured the guy in the hoodie between midnight and 1 am so they could track his trail.  No one did.  The police then released the full video, including a clip of him inside the building breaking a door lock, on facebook. It was fuzzy but they also asked everyone on our side of town to check their videos for a man in a hoodie in that time frame. 

People responded, they were able to track him, they located store videos that had much better clarity. The police got a warrant and found the items he had stolen in his apartment as well as being able to track his vehicle from the tapes from businesses between his apartment and the victims. 

They have released a statement:

On a related note, both Chief D. and Det. Merry cautioned people about using AI programs to enhance photos of suspects.

Someone used AI on an image of "thief" , and the "improved" version looked less like him than the original, according to Det. Merry. An area newspaper then used the AI version in an online story about the burglary, which potentially could have hindered people from identifying him.

Det. Merry did thank all of the area residents who offered the use of video from their doorbell cams for the investigation.