AI, OSINT, and Fighting Crime

It seems like they’re reading your mind.

You think about buying new tires for your car and suddenly your Facebook feed shows you fantastic deals on Michelin radials. You order a blender from Amazon, and your mailbox fills up with specialty cookware catalogs.

What if the technology that brings you these unwanted ads could solve or even prevent crimes? Television and movies thrive on technologies that match DNA records in seconds, identify suspects from grainy store security cameras, and pattern suspects from miniscule clues. However, the reality of criminal investigation is much more challenging.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a global term that actually reflects intuitive algorithms when it comes to law enforcement. The gathering of data into a central location, accessible by a variety of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) is the goal of modern, effective criminal investigation. However, the concept of “more is better” isn’t relevant in many crime fighting scenarios.

Brian MacDonald of Predictive Policing of Santa Cruz, California, approaches crime fighting from a preventive framework.

“Criminals are predictable,” MacDonald said. “They want the greatest reward for the least risk: increase the risk and they’ll go somewhere else.”

Predictive Policing operates under its corporate entity, Predpol, and utilizes intelligent data gathering in a simple format. “When, where and what are the only [pieces of] information we keep in our database,” MacDonald said. ”When was the crime committed? Where was it committed? What was the crime?”

Data is gathered, analyzed and presented to LEAs in 150x150 meter locations known as “Predpol blocks.” An officer or deputy receives these blocks on a smartphone app, through their PC at the office, or through reports generated by the software and adjust their patrol patterns to add more presence in the Predpol blocks.

The software has lowered crime rates by up to 40% in areas where patrols were matched with the digital predictions. Teamed with Google Earth, Predpol not only prevents crime but lowers public expenditures.

“It takes pressure off the system,” MacDonald said. “If you prevent crimes before they happen, it frees up law enforcement, court and prison costs, since a crime has not been committed.”

“It is like a digital beat cop. Law enforcement presence always means less crime.”

The software is geared towards crime committed in a physical location and isn’t used against cyber criminals. “Officers and deputies have a stronger presence where they’re needed and can make it a policy to travel through targeted areas on their way to other calls,” MacDonald said. “It is like a digital beat cop. Law enforcement presence always means less crime.”

Preventing crime lowers the investigative exposure, but there will still be crimes committed. When there are, it’s the job of criminal investigators to connect the dots and, hopefully, get the perpetrators in front of a judge and punished if found guilty.

Centralizing data, whether to prevent or solve crimes is important to all LEAs, but of prime importance to small police and sheriff departments that must often run on a shoestring budget.

Deputy-Sheriff Jason Cox is the Fremont County, Wyoming police department’s chief criminal investigator.

The department has 40 patrol deputies to cover 9,300 miles of rugged Wyoming desert, foothills and mountains up to 13,900 feet.

Cox utilizes the Spillman Flex system to coordinate the Sheriff’s office with the Lander and Riverton Police Departments. The three agencies police a large portion of the county population but an additional 13,000 enrolled members of the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes reside on the Wind River Indian Reservation that separates the two largest towns in the county. The reservation is served by a small force of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officers with assistance from the FBI.

“The dispatch center runs all calls through it,” Cox said. “You can see all the calls in the county. Some of the BIA information comes through but we can’t access a report from there. If I want to see what’s happened throughout the county in the last 24 hours, I can look up every call that comes in. If a ticket is created through dispatch it goes to the specific agency. You can read the officer’s narrative from there, even look up the persons who were contacted.”

In addition to narrative all evidence and property is processed through the Spillman system as well. The system sends teletypes to neighboring agencies and puts out informative messages to every agency in the state. “Amber alerts, stuff on a bigger scale will be broadcast over radio and television,” Cox said.

“it would be awesome, but you would almost have an information overload.”

The National Crime Information Center is tied into the system if certain parameters re met. “It will give us notifications from the FBI but we don’t have access to the FBI databases,” Cox stated. “If everybody was on the same system, like a Spillman system, [allowing] access from your office, patrol vehicle etc., it would be awesome, but you would almost have an information overload. There are perks to a single system, but there are some negatives.”

Another crime investigative business with a different target also resides on the west coast a few hundred miles north of Santa Cruz in Happy Valley, Oregon. L.E.A Data Technologies offers a comprehensive package of low cost software solutions designed for agencies with limited budgets.

“I knew there was some way to automate all those boxes of paper.”

Dave Broomfield, a retired police detective was frustrated with a case he worked on three decades ago.

“I started in 1987, I was one of four detectives in a serial murder,” Broomfield said. “We conducted 3300 interviews. I knew there was some way to automate all those boxes of paper. I just got the bug and learned to build programs that solve crime.” Broomfield was one of three people that started the company.

“We’re trying to give back to law enforcement rather than take from it. We have software that is designed for specific units,” Broomfield said. In Wyoming the coroner office in Crook and Campbell Counties utilize L.E.A.’s technology in their offices. “They’re using our death investigation database,” Broomfield said. “We worked with them to tailor it more for their situation.”

In an era where every police action draws close scrutiny training tracking is extremely important. “We have a training database. All of the officer training is recorded and easy to track their required training,” Broomfield said. “In an officer involved shooting the first question is always were they properly trained? With our software it is easy to track.” If there are issues with an officers performance there is software for that as well. “We have an internal affairs program that helps bring to the surface problematic officers,” Broomfield said. “We also have an equipment management program that tracks where everything is supposed to be.”

“The program benefits individual officers along with their department,” Broomfield said. “At the Gresham Police Department (Oregon) they missed an officer’s merit increase. When they discovered it the department took a $35,000 hit in back payments. That’s hard on a limited budget.” Incorporation of the software between multiple agencies could substantially reduce crime and aid in the investigation and prosecution of criminals but the caveat is territorial. “The problem is who would run it? Who makes the decision on what to call it? Who pays for it? You don’t see databases combined because of that,” Broomfield said. “Our robbery and burglary system is designed so at the end of the month you get an excel spreadsheet e-mailed to all the agencies. In Portland, Oregon that means 11 different agencies. All of them have the ability to import data.”

In the Portland area the software has been a proven success. The national robbery clearance rate ranges from 15 to 19% but in Portland it is 49%. The software has a predictive component that allows an agency to anticipate where a crime might be committed.

A serial bank robber served as a good example of predicting crime: Beaverton, Oregon, Portland, Provo, Utah and Vancouver, British Columbia and Salt Lake City were all hit by the same bank robber over several months. The software estimated that the Washington Mutual Bank in Vancouver would be the next target on April 26, 2001.

Pinkerton security saturated banks… and the robber hit; he got away.

Pinkerton security saturated banks throughout the Northwest with agents but two police officers assigned to the Washington Mutual Bank were out qualifying on the pistol range that morning, and the robber hit; he got away.

“With the system in place we as investigators can share each others’ data and look for patterns and points of entry,” Broomfield said. “We had a burglary string. The software indicated we should look for the next one between 10-pm Saturday and 3-am Sunday on the back door of a business. They looked for a guy with a pipe wrench to rip the handle off the door. When they caught the kid it cleared 62 burglaries. If you didn’t have a way to correlate and disseminate that information you’re reactive not proactive. It doesn’t make sense to spend less and get more. People think it’s probably cheap and doesn’t work, but I’m trying to help everybody,” Broomfield said. “A lot of our customers are normally not people who can afford anything else.”

Robert Leazenby, a supervisor of computer crime with the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI).

When crimes are committed in the digital realm, the only tools available are electronic. Mr. Leazenby is familiar with the digital aspects of law enforcement. “By the nature of that we deal with, data is more important to us than with the rest of DCI, or what traditional agents do,” Leazenby said. “We share information across the nation as it pertains to child exploitation.”

Computer crime doesn’t respect state or international boundaries. Crimes can be committed in one state and extend to many others or even across oceans and around the globe. “That’s how we became so involved heavily in sharing data. I could identify 10 suspects in a piece of work and I don’t just want to throw the other nine away because one is in Wyoming,” Leazenby said. “We do it more so than other any other component of law enforcement.”

Leazenby gave a few examples of how the DCI Data Division works. “If someone shares an illegal file from, say, Tennessee to Wyoming, Wyoming has jurisdiction because a portion of that crime occurred in Wyoming,” Leazenby explained. “We also have the ability to make a call to other states. It’s a tight community. I meet with my counterparts across the USA three or four times a year, because of these connections we are able to jump on it.”

DCI has the latitude to place federal charges, charges in other states, or in Wyoming alone. “If the guy in Tennessee is distributing to the entire U.S. we [would] probably confine that charge to Tennessee,” Leazenby said. “Any time that we see an area that is vulnerable to threat we monitor that area and try to identify patterns and threats.”

The nature of crimes against children precludes any divulgence of specific day to day operations by DCI in their investigations.

Paul Swenson is an FBI agent working out of Lander, Wyoming.

He does much of his work on the Wind River Indian Reservation. “We don’t share databases at all,” Swenson said. “The national security element requires an increased security clearance and we can’t share information as a result.”

In comparison with a local police force of one Chief and four officers, or a strained Sheriff’s office in a lightly populated rural county the FBI is a huge organization with limitless resources. “The benefit we have in the FBI is we have people whose sole job is just looking for stuff,” Swenson stated. “We’re a bigger agency. We have various levels of analysts we can turn an intel product over to, they can and do find a lot of information.”\

“They can find information back to birth records and school records if you wish.”

Swenson referred to the growing access of public information available to the general public in Open Source Intelligent (OSINT) as an example. “They can find information back to birth records and school records if you wish. A lot of it is publically available information, and you have to pay for some of it,” Swenson said. “Once you find a paper trail you can start looking at local information. The FBI has read only access on local databases. In my early years I spent a lot of hours at the Sheriff’s office looking for things. Spillman is miraculous, it is incredible, once you zero in on a suspect, doing the research through Spillman is very effective. One of the biggest travesties is that the reservation has never bought into that.”

Swenson, like his partner in law enforcement at the local Sheriff’s office, Deputy Cox, also has a concern about too much information. “I think it’s a very real concern, too much information,” Swenson said. “If the reservation put all their stuff in, it might make the system not work so well with a preponderance of information.”

In any setting, knowledge is power, and — in criminal investigations involving LEAs with limited resources — it is vital. Low cost software improves data collection, and data collection improves public safety. If a spigot of information turns into a torrent, software filtering allows trained officers to analyze and react to just the right amount of information to protect and serve.