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It’s here: A new reality in the way you train.

From NASA and medical schools, to Walmart, more and more organisations are turning to VR for training, as it’s highly effective and has unique capabilities to build empathy and teach soft skills. These are also vital for the ability to de-escalate situations – a core skill in policing. Robert Murphy, Senior Director of Virtual Reality at Axon details why VR is going to be the next big thing for in-work training.

• Investment in VR training is rising rapidly

• A substantial body of research shows that it works

• VR is uniquely suited to teach soft skills

• It's future (and Covid-19) compatible

• More about Axon's VR training modules

Investments in VR training is rising rapidly

Although VR is still more associated with gaming, VR training has a long history of training people in fields as diverse as medicine, space travel and the military. Investment in industrial VR applications has long outpaced the development of VR for entertainment. According to the XR Industry Insight, nearly twice as many companies are developing industrial AR (augmented reality) applications than are working on consumer products. A recent survey of IT decision-makers found that half of their companies were involved in developing VR applications. The same report expects worldwide spending on commercial virtual reality solutions to grow to $7.1 billion in 2020, up from $4.5 billion in 2019. 

Murphy says, ‘VR is sometimes seen as a gimmick, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s effectiveness for training has been well documented with a substantial body of research.’ This Price Waterhouse Coopers study, for example, found that ‘Users trained with VR were up to 275% more confident to act on what they learned after training—a 40% improvement over classroom and 35% improvement over e-learn.’ They also found that V-learners were 4 times more focused during training than their e-learning peers and felt 3.75 times more emotionally connected to the content than classroom learners.

There are now also the first meta-studies emerging, like this one on VR surgical simulators, confirming the effectiveness of using VR in professional training. 

These findings also hold up in real life: Walmart uses VR headsets to teach its employees how to operate its customer service facility, which has reduced the training time from eight hours to 15 minutes, with no drop in efficacy.

The more technology and artificial intelligence advance, the more we seem to tune into what makes us human. As a society, we increasingly realise the importance of soft skills, and the role empathy plays in pro-social behaviour. Now, neuroscientists have found that empathy is one of our core neurobiological competencies. And, what's more, this study proves that it's not fixed, but mutable and can be taught and enhanced.

Murphy says, 'Empathy is an important component of policing. We now understand a lot more about the positive effect building empathy has, especially when it comes to community engagement and relations. With homelessness and mental health conditions are on the rise, officers need to understand what a community is going through and VR is the perfect tool for it.'

This gives officers a deeper insight and better understanding of what kind of response is most likely to de-escalate the situation when faced with somebody who is behaving irrationally.

VR is uniquely suited to teach soft skills

'In policing today, there is a big emphasis on better communication,' says Murphy. ‘VR is a safe space to try out different responses and see how these affect the outcome, without actual negative consequences.'

You can also train how to respond, while being subjected to an intense sensory experience (rather than in an artificial training environment) developing soft skills through repetition. 'When the fight or flight mechanism kicks in,' says Murphy, 'you are not going to remember what you learnt on paper, so the right response needs to be drilled with realistic stressors until it becomes second nature.'

'It's limitless', says Murphy. 'With VR, you can put somebody on a bridge, or a rooftop, or outside somebody's home who is having a psychotic episode, so no expensive training setups are needed. In particular, police training traditionally involves role-play, often in scenarios that need various actors as well as an elaborate set up to be convincing.’

After the initial purchase, VR goggles are, of course, a lot more cost-effective than role play or classroom training, as they can be used over and over again with no additional cost. VR training also often only takes a fraction of the time, meaning fewer working hours are lost.

It's, of course, safe while there is a threat of Covid-19, but also has great potential for future applications. The pandemic has fast-tracked virtual developments and increased their acceptance, as employees and employers look for greater flexibility. 

There is also huge potential in this technology, and companies are looking into developing 3-dimensional training environments, where people can interact virtually.

Recognising the huge advantage of VR training for the police, Axon is currently offering three modules: Schizophrenia, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Suicidal Ideation, all incorporating the latest insights into these conditions.

Axon is releasing more modules: Hard of Hearing, Post Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) and Active Bystander. Murphy says, 'People who are hard of hearing can appear disobedient, and this module trains police officers in the subtle signs that show the difference. The PTSI module teaches police officers to spot the signs in themselves, members of the community as well as colleagues as well as advice on how to address it. Active Bystander, is a module on peer intervention, which teaches officers what they can do if they recognise that a colleague is heading down an unethical path. How do you step in at an appropriate time and prevent unnecessary harm?'

How are the VR training modules received? Murphy says, 'We had a lot of interest. We find young officers, who have grown up with technology are very receptive to these solutions. But experienced officers also find them useful, in particular, as there are a lot of new insights about mental health conditions and a better understanding of how best to address them. 

‘We work with eminent experts in this field and distilling the research into immersive 10-minute training modules can be a real challenge. We take our inspiration from video games, cinematic experiences, virtual experiences, first-person view documentaries and 360˚ video. We're also looking to take VR training a step further, with many more ideas and modules in development. One of the exciting things is that what you can do in VR is only limited by your imagination.'

ARTICLE: Six signs that VR is the future of in-work training

Six signs that VR is the future of in-work training

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NATIONAL POLICING DIGITAL STRATEGY

The UK’s National Policing Digital Strategy (NPDS) makes one thing very clear: the UK’s police forces will need to use digital technologies to respond to profound societal changes and maximise tight budgets. Mike Ashby-Clarke, Axon’s UK Country Manager and a former Metropolitan police officer, looks at how the strategy will shape policing across four areas:



1. OPTIMISING EFFICIENCY THROUGH DIGITAL TOOLS

The strategy strongly encourages police forces to engage more fully with the opportunities that digital technologies create, especially in two areas. The first is enabling police officers to work more efficiently. The second is to provide citizens with a seamless experience when contacting the police, aiming for a smooth interaction across multiple contact channels – e.g. mobile or web. The NPDS also calls for closer collaboration across the public sector to tackle complex public safety issues. 

There is a perception that public safety bodies can be slow to uptake new technology. But there are signs of change: most police forces are now moving away from on-premise technology to use cloud-based solutions that are easier to deploy and run and are more cost-efficient. This is, in part, down to the myth being dispelled that on-premise systems are more secure but it’s also in recognition of the fact that new technology, such as AI, needs the limitless power of cloud computing to deliver real efficiencies.

The need for tech ethics has come to the forefront in the last five to six years, and the NPDS has ethics high on the agenda. It is applying the same ethical approach, which is already entrenched in policing values, to digital technology. The question is, how are these safeguards implemented across 43 different forces and varying political agendas from the respective Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs)?

AI, in particular, is being used in new solutions. For example the use of AI to predict crimes, often termed predictive policing, have led to calls for more oversight and guidance.

The strategy seeks to strengthen the relationships between police forces and the private sector. We have seen national technology programmes, which aim to provide systems for all forces, fail in recent years. The reason for this is that it seems almost impossible to simultaneously satisfy the requirements of 43 different organisations – each with their individual challenges and goals – even when building a platform or solution from scratch. The private sector can provide a solution, having the skills to build, iterate and configure off-the-shelf products at pace and scale. The Met’s Body-Worn Video (BWV) programme is a good example. In just 12 months 22,000 cameras and 50,000 Digital Evidence Management System (DEMS) licences were deployed and all users trained.

The implementation of the strategy depends on individual PCCs, who are providing police funding. And while there is some pressure to implement the recommendations, a lack of resources may make this difficult. Due to budget cuts, many police forces have a backlog of more pressing demands that take precedence: for example, equipping all firearms officers with point-of-view video cameras, which is mandatory but not all forces currently comply with this requirement. Indeed, additional funding will be needed to help forces deploy new technology and take advantage of the promise this offers to improve crime-fighting and streamline workflows to allow police teams to spend less time on clerical work and more in their communities. 

The report emphasises that the private sector offers a great deal that can be used to help achieve the vision of the NPDS. The private sector can attract world-leading tech talent and afford to invest a substantial part of its profits in R&D. This just cannot be matched by public sector funding during times of contracting budgets. 

Since Peel set the tone for modern policing, the UK’s police forces have been highly regarded, especially given that the relative safety enjoyed by UK citizens is achieved by unarmed officers. Looking forward, we need to embrace innovation and consider the role that innovative technology can play to help the UK’s police force remain the leading light they’re seen to be.

ARTICLE: FOUR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE NATIONAL POLICING DIGITAL STRATEGY

Four takeaways from the National Policing Digital Strategy

Police officers are in the field in all weather and for long periods and, at times, their work will involve chasing people and physical confrontation. It follows that their equipment must be durable, comfortable, and unobtrusive to wear and seamlessly fit into their working lives. Achieving these goals requires an innovative product design and an obsession with seemingly small details. It’s the kind of work that Kevin Coles thrives on. He’s a product designer, who has been devising and manufacturing the accessories and mounts for Axon products used by the country’s police forces. Here he gives five observations on what most influences his team’s work. 

Each piece of equipment and accessory has to perfectly mould into police officers’ lives. This means, for example, that while Axon’s core products are the same in the US and UK, the way they are worn isn’t. The UK, for example, often has different requirements, which is why everything from UK-specific mounts to holsters and training suits are designed and manufactured in the UK.

For example, the Flex 2 is a small cigar-shaped point of view camera designed to record exactly what the wearer sees, but the camera needs to point directly at what the police officer is looking at: if they tip or turn their head, the camera needs to follow. In the US this is achieved by fixing it to officers’ sunglasses. But that’s not an option in the UK, where most police forces require officers to take off sunglasses when interacting with the public. 

Speaking about this challenge, Coles says: “To develop the head mount for the Flex 2, I worked closely with the police firearm school and their officers. After observing and talking to officers, I decided firstly to place the camera on the peak of the police cap with a magnetic mount and then moved on to different solutions. We took a long time honing this product, and settled on a Velcro compatible loop covering to the peak and hook under the mount in combination with an especially designed and manufactured woven elastic with silicone dots, so that it would grip the camera but stay flexible. Developing this mount took a large number of interviews and rigorous testing, but we got it right in the end – it’s a top-rated product, with over 3,000 police officers using it. No matter how small a product is, we won’t stop until we get it just right.” He’s recently completed a new challenge successfully for a police force who needed the Flex 2 to be worn on the shoulder. 

To get the design just right, countless technical details have to be considered. Coles says, “We have to think carefully about materials. Equipment has to withstand pepper spray and fabrics have to be durable and breathable. We even use materials developed by NASA. Equipment, like a body-worn camera (BWC), has to withstand being pulled and grabbed. But in other situations – for example, if an officer has come off a motorbike or a wire gets trapped the camera should have a release mechanism, so that there’s no risk of the officer being pulled along. Police are not just walking, but also running, rolling on the floor, and jumping into their cars. We have to think about the worst possible scenario and design with it in mind because it could be a matter of life and death.”

To make sure not just every piece of equipment, but also every mount, holster and training suit, works perfectly and in every situation, numerous interviews are conducted before and during their development and throughout the in-depth testing regime.

To get the design of fixes and mounts just right, the designer really has to understand the ins and outs of police officers’ daily work. Coles can draw on over twenty years of experience working closely with police, supplying equipment, getting to know different police forces and their exact requirements.  

He knows on an intuitive level that all equipment just has to work: the best BWC is of little use if it is difficult to operate, poorly mounted so it moves about, or the lens angle isn’t right. Police officers are also often on their feet all day, so any equipment and its connectors have to be comfortable and user-friendly.

One particularly valuable experience was taking part in an instructor training course. “There was a part where they put you under stress,” says Coles. “They get you to run into a darkened room with smoke, flashing lights, loud banging noises and I had to get a pair of handcuffs on somebody. It really got my adrenaline going and gave me a feel of the stress officers can be under and an understanding that police equipment has to be robust and usable almost without thinking. To be honest I didn’t perform very well at all, but I learnt a lot about an officer’s work.”

Approaching design from the point of view of the user (quite literally in this case), is often referred to as ‘design thinking’, a shift in product development that has emerged in recent years. The designs evolve out of understanding and empathy: being able to put yourself into the position of the user rather than top-down product development, where the focus is on features. Indeed, the most successful companies put the needs of the customer first, focusing on user experience and solving their problems through intelligent design. 

Coles works with his colleagues to put prototypes together in-house and then works with the police to thoroughly test and hone them until Axon is 100% satisfied that they meet the company’s high standards and satisfy customers' needs. He says, “We have worked with the College of Policing as well as different forces, who are very keen to have an input at the development stage and make sure they get the best products.” The process works well. It can involve the occasional setback when we haven’t quite got things right but as long as the end result turns out well and the customer is happy, it’s all worthwhile.

Axon takes a holistic approach to product development – it’s not just about an individual product, but how all the pieces of equipment work together, creating a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Axon’s vision is an ecosystem with the police officer at its centre, increasing their capabilities and making sure they are as effective as they possibly can be by providing powerful tools that are reliable and intuitive to use. 

Good design is essential to the vision. And officers never pay much attention to the big little things, such as mounts, which means that Coles got it just right. 

ARTICLE: The Big Little Things

The Big Little Things

Mike Ashby-Clarke is Axon’s UK country manager. Prior to Axon, Mike was an officer in the Metropolitan Police Service (Met). In 2014 he was a sergeant in Camden, North London, where he had first-hand experience of the Met’s 10-borough trial of body-worn cameras. As the force moved to a full deployment of 22,000 Axon Body 2s in 2016, Mike assumed the role of the project’s performance and governance lead. The article calls on this unusual blend of project oversight and operational experience to explain the five key insights that Mike believes can help ensure successful body-worn camera deployments. They include:

1: The trial phase: Turn sceptics into advocates (and make cameras a mandatory accessory)

The Met’s trial of body-worn cameras, run in partnership with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the College of Policing, was the world’s largest. It involved 10 boroughs, focusing on Emergency Response Teams (ERTs). Five ERTs were randomly assigned to either the treatment group, who were issued cameras (two teams), or the control group (three teams). The Met elected to run the project in an advisory capacity, recommending that officers assigned cameras wore them. But it was not mandatory. 

With any roll-out of new technology there will be advocates, sceptics and those in between. Says Mike: “We had our fair share of each. And it just so happens that one of the more vocal members of my team, who was not a fan, pivoted in his view when he saw how cameras protect officers.”

The officer was implicated in an allegation of assault. It was made against him and a colleague by a female suspect they were transporting to custody. It was so serious that, under normal circumstances, a professional standards investigation would have commenced. The officers would also have been withdrawn from duty.

However, both officers’ cameras had recorded the incident. The footage showed there was no case. The complainant was charged with wasting police time and the officers were spared the professional and personal worry associated with a standards review. “This one incident completely changed the officer’s view,” observes Mike. “As a result, everyone started to wear their cameras more often and it impressed two things on me. Firstly, that, if there are officers who are well-known figures, it’s best to try to bring them onside to help influence others. Secondly, due to the protection that cameras give officers, there’s strong merit in making it mandatory that they’re worn throughout any trial. And, ultimately, the more officers that do so, the more evidence there’ll be behind the business case.”

2: The deployment phase: Success lies in planning and benchmarking

Support for body-worn cameras in London had been building for a while ahead of their deployment. And, with public opinion, the Mayor’s Office and the Met all onside, the project team identified over 20 goals. But quickly the performance and governance team felt these needed to be refined. 

Says Mike: “As we got into the roll-out, we identified that our targets were esoteric. A good example is the business case. We set the goal that body-worn cameras should pay for themselves by reducing complaints against officers, and therefore litigation costs. Since the cameras were rolled out, complaints have fallen by 40% – a great win. But in reality, it’s hard to say how much of this is directly attributable to body-worn cameras and thus how much of a financial benefit we can claim.”

Mike’s team trimmed the project’s goals down to eight. They set a baseline measure for each one, including tracking the public’s confidence in body-worn video, ensuring that all stop and search incidents are recorded and increasing positive criminal justice outcomes and early guilty pleas. A dashboard monitored the goals. And each month Mike presented findings to borough commanders to show them how they were doing relative to peers. He says: “This is the key learning for me – it’s critical to set quantifiable goals at the outset. These can be used not only to justify spending but to encourage teams to adopt best practice.”

3: The deployment phase: Take your community with you 

Although the roll-out of body-worn cameras was broadly supported by Londoners, there were concerns about how they’d be used. What’s more, the capital had an ongoing issue, with some communities feeling that they were disproportionately targeted by stop and search. The body-worn camera team worked closely with communities to tackle both issues head-on. Partnering with the Met’s Community Monitoring Groups, officers met regularly with local community leaders. Random stop and search footage was selected to discuss whether the stop was appropriate and how the interaction was handled. Constructive feedback was fed back to officers. 

“The Met rightly receives a lot of kudos for this level of transparency,” says Mike. “And, as stop and search becomes more frequently used to arrest the rise in knife crime, I believe we’ll see less push back from communities who now have a deeper understanding of the rationale behind this. Critically, too, since we rolled out the cameras, the recording of all stop and search situations has grown from 40% to close to 100% – this is a major win for officers, people being stopped and communities. It protects the truth and ensures transparency.”

4: The deployment phase: Train the trainers – and be flexible 

While body-worn cameras are intuitive to use, the whole approach to capturing footage and managing it does require training. In the Met, delivering this across a large force was a challenge. It managed this by providing online training. Officers had to present their training certificate before they were issued with cameras. Meanwhile, ‘super users’ were trained for each station and were on hand to help colleagues. It’s also advisable to have a dedicated project team – involving officers, tech staff and data analysts.

Having officers on the team is especially important. Mike gives this example as to why: “It’s not unusual for a tech survey to suggest that the best place for camera docks is near a junction box when, actually, officers want them to hand in their parade room. Apparent nuances like this can make a big difference to the way officers engage with kit.”

It’s also recommended that the project team is retained post deployment. The main reason for this is that SaaS products like Axon Evidence are continually updated. While this brings huge value in terms of optimising investments, software improvements need to be validated and tested to ensure they are appropriate for each force. Referring to this, Mike comments: “You can’t assume that new features will just be assimilated into business as usual. So training platforms must be easy to update to ensure courses stay in step with agency protocols and the new capabilities available to officers. The obvious solution is an online training portal with updates to resources sent to all officers who need to take them.”

5: The deployment phase: Promote the roll-out 

In the public sector, budgets can be tight. This can lead to a make-do and mend approach to technology, with teams feeling they have to endure, not enjoy, equipment and systems. 

Body-worn cameras represented a major uplift in terms of kit and the project team wanted to emphasise this. All officers were sent a ‘goody bag’. This included headphones, cue cards that could be handed to the public to explain why cameras were used, and the bag itself which doubled up as a lint lens cleaner. “A 22,000 camera roll-out is a big investment,” says Mike. “We wanted the issuing of devices to feel like unboxing a new iPhone. As a result of this, officers took greater ownership of their cameras and looked after them more.” 

To learn more about the Met’s deployment of body-worn cameras, two case studies are available: 

Sharing 5,500 clips with the CPS every month 

The benefits of SaaS for digital evidence management

ARTICLE: Five Insights From the UK's Biggest Body-Worn Camera Deployment

Five Insights From the UK's Biggest Body-Worn Camera Deployment

Kathleen O’Toole is one of the grandees of policing. Her career spanned continents and stretched from front-line officer to commissioner. She is also a member of Axon’s AI Ethics Board. Here she explains why Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing are as valid today as when they were formulated in 1829. 

Peel’s principles have stood the test of time and remain the foundation of modern, democratic policing. The core message of ‘policing by consent’ means that, by and large, for the police to succeed, they must earn and maintain the trust of the community. Today, perhaps more than at any other time, these principles face a serious test. New technologies, such as facial recognition and prediction modelling, have vast potential to anticipate and prevent crime. But the use of some technologies, such as facial recognition, raises dystopian concerns about surveillance. What’s more, the emergence of bias in AI (which is central to predicting crimes) that seems to mimic the way humans stereotype, is undermining the public’s confidence in these innovations. With these issues in mind, how can we find the balance between making use of these powerful technologies, while still policing with consent and getting buy-in from our communities? Kathleen recommends four disciplines that can help:

Engaging the community and building trust

Soon after my appointment as the police chief in Seattle, I asked the precinct captains how we were doing on crime, and they replied, ‘Good...we think’. In reality, they had no idea - no measurement. Within weeks, we launched SeaStat, our version of CompsStat (computer statistics program), to capture timely and accurate data to map crime. 

The data we captured went well beyond crime data and showed that we were hugely involved in our community. In fact, similar to studies of other major cities, law enforcement was only 10-15% of the work we were doing. The rest was providing service and assisting vulnerable people.  Our greatest challenges were at the intersection of public health and public safety – homelessness, addiction, conditions and mental health crises.  We were constantly under pressure to address people’s concerns about quality of life issues in their neighbourhoods. 

We also discovered that officers used force in less than 2% of cases and most of it was minimal – officers only had to use serious force in a fraction of 1% of cases. We were able to use this data to address concerns and perceptions about officers’ performance and to have more constructive conversations with the community. Showing that our day-to-day operations were very different from the police shows most people see on TV also helped to enhance trust and build better relationships.

Without timely data and reliable metrics, it’s difficult to engage communities and focus on the issues that matter to them. When it comes to building trust, and policing with consent, we can use improved data collection techniques and analysis to shine a light on police work. This helps move the tone of debate away from speculation and perception to facts that enable a better understanding of the way police work and the often unseen effort that officers put in to helping their communities, looking after the vulnerable and keeping us safe. 

One of the biggest changes I’ve seen in policing is the availability of digital tools to capture data and analyze crime, and also to understand the broader demands on the police. In Seattle, we used our operations data to establish community policing micro plans, unique strategies to address concerns in specific neighbourhoods.

Of course, we always focused on serious ‘headline’ crimes. But we also developed a grassroots approach, engaging front-line police officers and community members in the development of neighbourhood strategies. They had first-hand knowledge of the challenges they faced, and often presented the best solutions. For each neighbourhood, we distilled three to five issues to focus on. We partnered with a local university to develop quantitative and qualitative metrics to gauge results, measure community satisfaction, and inform the evolution of each micro-plan.

At the same time, we acquired and developed additional tools to build trust and enhance transparency.  Body cameras were issued to all patrol officers. Public-facing dashboards allowed the community to access timely data and reports. We even worked with Code for America and mental health service providers to develop an app to assist officers when encountering those in mental health crises. It enhanced safety for officers and vulnerable members of the community. 

The SeaStat system that we set up in Seattle helped us define priorities and reframe our discussion with communities about the work we were doing and, indeed, the work they wanted us to do. With a view to being as transparent as possible, we published maps and data online. Anyone with an interest in policing could see data and reports on crime, other calls for service, community policing micro-plans, use of force, hate crimes, mental health crisis intervention and a variety of other topics. Clearly, it’s not possible to publish all operational data. We wouldn’t undermine ongoing investigations and certainly had to be mindful of privacy issues. However, we shared as much as possible. It may not always be easy, particularly if the results are not flattering, but honesty and authentic engagement are essential to building trust. Independent surveys showed that our relationship with the community benefited significantly as a result. 

As we look forward, at a time when budgets will, no doubt, be tight and police will face ever-growing demands for service, it’s clear that robust technology tools will be essential to the delivery of effective policing. 

However, there is a ‘but’. And it’s that technology is developing at an incredibly fast pace - so fast that the capabilities available to police services could undermine important democratic principles. There are growing community concerns around privacy and data retention. License plate readers are a good example. People are not necessarily concerned that their license plates are captured by a tolling system on the highway, but they probably would want to know if police have access to data from such systems, how long that data is retained, and with whom it is shared. 

Most people are reasonable and understand that we have to strike a balance. But it is incumbent on us as law enforcers and service providers to present them with certain scenarios and potential solutions, and to ask if they are willing to sacrifice a bit of privacy for a safer neighborhood. The more we communicate, and the more transparent we are, the more the community will trust our judgment. Of course, consulting the public isn’t always a smooth process, but a bit of healthy tension is a key element of democratic governance. 

Failure to consult, in my view, is deeply problematic. If the community or their elected leaders find out that the police department has purchased technology that violates democratic principles without consultation, I believe we contravene the letter and the spirit of Peel’s ideals. We have already seen facial recognition trials become contentious and there is concern around new AI applications designed to anticipate crime but which seem to introduce human racial biases into their results. These developments, in particular, must be handled with care – and a great deal of openness. 

I have interacted over the years with lots of vendors and appreciate companies, like Axon, that engage in meaningful conversations about the impact new technologies may have. In a democracy, we all – including the manufacturers – have a responsibility and need to pull together to succeed. Or, as Peel put it, “The police are the people, and the people are the police.”

I think Axon is unique in creating an AI Ethics Board. As a manufacturer, Axon is taking responsibility and addressing the issues before their products are released.

For example, when Axon was contemplating integrating facial recognition in their cameras, they consulted us. The board consists of some incredible researchers and civil liberties experts as well as a couple of us with police experience. After a thoughtful process and some spirited discussions, we landed unanimously at the recommendation to not use this technology until it improves, because we were concerned by troubling data about misidentifications. I thought it was a bold and admirable decision of the CEO to follow our recommendation. 

It’s great to think that there is a vendor out there, who is actually taking responsibility at the front end, rather than flooding the market with products that are attractive but could have significant privacy implications. 

As a police chief, I had some really smart people on my team, but the more people we have contemplating these issues and potential risks associated with these products, the better. More companies should be thoughtful and transparent in their processes. 

ARTICLE: FOUR WAYS TO PUT PEEL’S PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Four Ways to Put Peel's Principles Into Practice in the Digital Age

In our multimedia, data-driven world, the interfaces used in emergency control rooms are becoming outdated. So much so that it’s time to find a new solution fit for the 21st century. So says Josh Pepper, Axon’s Vice President of Product Management, who leads the development of Axon’s solutions for operations and control centres.

Emphasising the need for a new approach to dispatch, Josh says: “I’ve banned the term CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch) on my team. It stems from the 1960s and doesn’t make any sense anymore. It’s like saying ‘computer-aided Facebook’. There is no other Facebook, or dispatch. We need a whole new category.”

Indeed, dispatch seems decades behind in terms of technology. In daily life, communication via video, links, messages and photos is the norm, but control centres still largely rely on a ticketing system as well as radio. “It’s like sucking all of that information through a straw,” as Josh puts it. “Google Maps knows where you are, but 999 doesn’t in a lot of places. Being able to text the emergency services would just be the tip of the iceberg – we should be able to video call or FaceTime them as well, which would also give them much richer information.”

Alongside the need for a more information-rich, dexterous and modern interface to help control teams to make decisions, the public expects its agencies to be supported with the best systems available. However, as this review by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch concludes, to date, there’s been a far greater focus on emergency medical response systems. It goes on to call for the optimisation of operations systems for both police and firefighting teams. 

Anyone who’s been in a dispatch room will recognise just how important it is in helping officers on the ground respond to incidents – a fact that’s vividly underlined by a recent experiment conducted by the University of Colorado in 2019. It showed that receiving accurate information from the dispatcher can be a matter of life and death: 62% of participants fired a gun in error when primed with inaccurate information, compared to 6% when given the correct facts.  

The experiment introduces the theoretical concept of cognitive heuristics, which looks at how different factors influence decision making when under pressure. It highlights the importance of accurate information at dispatch as it shows that police officers (like everybody else) are likely to interpret new events (for example, a suspect pulling a phone from his pocket) in line with their previously constructed interpretation (in this case, the dispatcher telling the officer that a gun was likely to be present).

While dispatch hasn’t evolved in step with technology over the last two decades, our understanding of how the brain works has. With advances in neuroscience as well as psychology, we have a much better understanding of what influences our decision making. Ultimately, this can help us to devise systems that optimise our capabilities for critical thinking.

Likewise, we’re also beginning to understand the limits of our ‘cognitive load’ and how going beyond it lowers our decision-making ability and causes stress. This is relevant for dispatchers, who still largely rely on radio to assess situations which can be especially challenging when streams of messages are being sent back from multiple officers in the field. It’s a noisy medium and, in addition to trying to process other data, the pressure on operators can be extreme. In fact, stress is thought to be a strong contributor to the high staff turnover in dispatch centres. This is estimated to be between 30% and 50% a year, underlining the need to find more effective ways to help operators work.

Referring to the use of radio for dispatch, Josh says: “It’s like trying to coach a football team over the phone – it’s difficult! With our real-time operations platform we’re looking at how we can put everybody involved in the decision-making process in the field of play – albeit virtually. We’re using video streamed from CCTV, bodycams and dashcams to enable operators to see what’s happening in real time. And we’re augmenting this view with data signals that can tell the dispatcher if an officer is standing, running or wrestling or if a gun is unholstered or TASER armed.” 

It’s now 20 years since the first TETRA and APCO-25 radio systems provided nationwide voice coverage for Public Safety teams. Over the time, dispatch processes have been refined. And the advent of new technology, including mapping and resource systems, has helped improve incident response. But in many ways, control centres have not kept pace with the technology evolution, especially around taking advantage of video, sensors from data, social media and much more. For Josh and his team, the opportunity to rethink dispatch was therefore hugely exciting. 

The team has been fortunate in spending time over the last few years with many agencies and in hitting the road with officers to understand what they need from a dispatch system. They then integrated the research into their real-time operations platform, which harnesses signals from sensors in the field, enabling users to “know before it’s voiced”, to coordinate responses and communicate more effectively. 

Josh concludes: “I wanted to start this project with the end in mind, which is giving everybody involved in the response to an incident a clear picture of what is happening on the ground. Digital technology is incredibly powerful and this is a great opportunity to put it into the service of public safety. We’re confident that we can transform situational analysis in a way that supports decision making and optimises incident response without overloading operators with too much data to process.”

ARTICLE: IT’S TIME TO RE-THINK DISPATCH

It's Time to Re-think Dispatch

As we struggle to come to terms with this new reality, police officers are under even more pressure to keep this country safe. It’s clear that pandemic has made an already stressful job even more challenging as police forces have to enforce the lockdown and deal with a lot of the fall-out from this crisis while minimising the risk of infection. 

Damian Hughes has studied the most successful sports coaches to learn about effective leadership and write the bestselling book 'The Five Steps to a Winning Mindset - What Sport can Teach Us About Great Leadership. And while policing is very different to sport, strong leadership is needed for both. Here, he shares his insights on how leaders can guide their team to behave cohesively and foster resilience. 

We live in a time where we are bombarded with information and digital interruptions - according to some studies 37 an hour, which hamper our efforts to concentrate. The many unknowns of the current crisis also creates ambiguity, which makes it harder to focus. Hughes asks, 'How do you differentiate in the deafening noise of information and distraction? How do you get people to focus? The answer is that in a time of overload you need to keep it simple.' He explains that in times of change, great leaders ask themselves how much information the people in their team are capable of processing. True leadership is not about sending out a lot of relevant messages, but picking the most important and communicate it as simply as possible. This can often be done by delivering the Bottom Line Up Front, also referred to as BLUF, used by the most successful Hollywood writers as well as business executives. 

The heuristics we all develop for everyday life, often don't apply in times of changes. Without being able to fall back on tried and tested systems, reflection is necessary to respond to new challenges intelligently. Hughes says, 'Thinking and processing, as well as retaining information, is crucial for making intelligent decisions. This is why you need to create a space where people have the time to stop and think.' He also underlines the importance to provide an environment where people feel safe to ask questions, trusting that they will be handled sensitively.

To illustrate the importance of emotional intelligence, Hughes quotes Emmanuel Steward, the head coach of Kronk, one of the most successful US boxing gyms. He says a coach needs to 'contain [emotions] then explain'. This includes acknowledging and responding to the often difficult feelings of the people he trains. This kind of emotional intelligence is also crucial for leaders during times of stress. 'If we take those three words to heart, we can all successfully handle and thrive in the face of change', says Hughes. He draws on insights from neuroscience, explaining that stress often triggers a 'freeze, fight or flight' response, rather than activating our more rational thinking circuits. To access these, people need to feel safe, in control and valued, as feeling safe is the key to handling change. 

Abstraction can lead to ambiguity and incorrect interpretations. 'Strip language of anything that could be misconstrued,' says Hughes. He then cites a quote, which is often attributed to Albert Einstein: 'If you can't explain it simply to a six-year-old, you don't understand it well enough.'

Stories have the power to inspire, as our brains are prepared to listen to and absorb narratives more readily than fact. 'In times of change, telling stories is the most effective tool you can use,' he says. And the best way to tell them is, of course, simply. Pixar is, for example, extremely good at simple but poignant stories always following the following structure:

'Have I created time and space to stop and think?'

'Have I stripped my language of jargon to make it accessible and understandable?'

'Have I got stories to illustrate how people have navigated change?'

'If you have said, yes, I want to give you confidence that you have the skills to survive and thrive during change.'

ARTICLE: Leadership in Times of Crisis

Leadership in Times of Crisis

Saturday played host to arguably the biggest game of the nascent Premier League season as heavyweights Spurs and Man City shared the spoils in an entertaining game. Predictably, the action was notable for a late Video Assistant Referee (VAR) decision that saw City’s winner chalked-off for handball. Indeed, VAR has been welcomed this season with mixed reviews. But there’s no doubt that the technology is here to stay and that its use will improve. VAR will allow the men policing matches to ensure justice is done while simultaneously prompting us to look at other areas of society such as the relationship between those that protect us – and the level of scrutiny they endure – and how new technology can help support them in ensuring the right outcome for all.

Let’s not forget, there’s a reason why referees are described as policing a match because the closest comparison is your actual Boys and Girls in Blue. Ensuring the right decisions are made demands a certain kind of mentality, one that is calm under, sometimes extreme, pressure, that is resilient, and that is unshakeable in its judgement. Oh, and a sense of humour helps too. All professional footballers agree that the best refs referee with a smile on their face. It would be barely believable if a police officer never said out loud: “You need a sense of humour to work here.”

Respect, they say, has to be earned. It takes some human being – in the heat of the action – to withstand the pressure of a 60,000-strong crowd baying for a decision a ref knows is not the right outcome. VAR’s technology, and the healthy scrutiny it brings, will prove, if ever needed, why the men in black have our respect. 

That comparison between referee and policeman becomes even more finite, when you consider that police officers’ Body Worn Video (BWV) allows scrutiny of their actions too.

Of course, VAR has been deployed in other competitions for several years and goal line technology longer – the latter preventing what became described as ‘Ghost Goals’, one of the most memorable being Luis Garcia’s for Liverpool against Chelsea in the 2005 Champions League Semi-Finals. Geoff Hurst laments the fact that, in the 1966 World Cup Final, there was no goal line technology that would have proved his second goal bounced down from the crossbar and over the line as that would have put a stop to years of moaning by the Germans. 

Would Graham Poll have given three yellows to Croatia’s Joseph Simunic in World Cup 2006 if one of his assistants had intervened much earlier down an earpiece?

If, at the time, the earpiece was the biggest groundbreaking piece of technology used by the ref then, for the police service, it was the deployment of the radio. That start of a relationship between policeman and machine would eventually reach the perfect match with the BWV and  TASER devices, and change how an officer did his or her job and, just as crucially, how they felt about doing that job.

Nick Davies spent 30 years in the force, beginning as a bobby on the beat in Cardiff (South Wales): “Towards the end of my police career in 2014 BWV came in. I could see the writing on the wall. Our working lives would alter dramatically. We were now able to show a judge, a jury, the local community what words in a statement could never say. It’s given officers more confidence and authority while they are at the coal face. When an offender sees the footage he has nowhere to go. In the old days he would argue about what I said, he said, what happened, what didn’t happen. Video evidence is irrefutable.”

That irrefutable evidence led in 2016 to a 93% reduction from the previous year in complaints against the police, according to a University of Cambridge study. Dr Barak Ariel, of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, said: “I cannot think of any [other] single intervention in the history of policing that dramatically changed the way that officers behave, the way that suspects behave and the way they interact with each other. The cameras create an equilibrium between the account of the officer and the account of the suspect about the same event – increasing accountability on both sides.”  

Similarly West Midlands Police report that complaints have fallen by 93 percent since it deployed BWV. And more importantly the cameras are helping to deliver against a key goal with officers nearly 300 percent less likely to be injured when they wear one. This delivers a knock-on effect in reduced costs as the force does not need to pay for medical assistance or send officers to hospital to accompany injured colleagues. The cameras are also helping to reduce paperwork with footage uploaded to a new system, Axon Evidence, that enables digital files to be shared directly with the Crown Prosecution Service. The reduction in paperwork tallies with the findings of the first national pilot of BWV that concluded that time spent on paperwork had been reduced by 22.4%, which led to a 9.2% increase in officer time spent on patrol (“50 minutes of a 9-hour shift”).

Like the introduction of police radios, the use of VAR will come to be seen by communities as a staging post in the relationship between technology and, above all, its ability to secure justice.

Police officers face demanding and highly pressurised situations every shift. To see how technology is helping them protect themselves, colleagues, the public – and suspects – by safely de-escalating incidents, check out this point-of-view video

ARTICLE: Supporting Informed Decision-Making With Video

As the latest Premier League season gets underway what insight will VAR offer us in the quest to ensure fairer outcomes using technology?

Supporting Informed Decision-Making With Video

Today, officers spend as much as two-thirds of their day on paperwork. We at Axon consider this a failure of their technology.

Our AI Research team is working to cut the time spent on paperwork by improving the efficiency and accuracy of report writing and information analysis in law enforcement.

These advancements will help keep officers in the community – not behind a desk.

Our job is to provide police officials with technology that helps them serve their communities. We take privacy extremely seriously, and we're committed to never releasing a product that has unaddressed privacy concerns. Our team focuses on improving workflows, and leaves decision-making to the officers. Here's what that looks like:

So officers can share footage with the public faster while protecting the privacy of individuals captured on video

So supervisors can better understand compliance and provide feedback in order to improve training and police-community relations.

AUTOMATED REPORTING GENERATED DIRECTLY FROM VIDEO AND AUDIO

So officers can spend more time with the community instead of writing reports.

Want to learn more about our efforts? Contact us.

Our team comprises machine-learning researchers and engineers. We balance an aggressive roadmap of engineering challenges with a portfolio of research bets.

While we work hard and take our work seriously, we thrive in a collaborative environment that is dynamic, fast-paced and fun. We're a small team within Axon building a complex system, which means that every researcher and engineer owns a major part of our pipeline and is responsible for its architecture and design.

We understand the importance of collaboration for rigorous research and encourage team members to publish and open-source. We love discussing hard problems in computer vision, natural language processing and data science, and love coding together. And above all, we believe in Axon's mission to Protect Life.

ARTICLE: OUR LEADER'S VIEWS ON AI RESEARCH

The latest on our AI initiatives

Our Leader's Views On AI Research

Our latest body camera, Axon Body 3, recently launched. We continue to hear great stories from customers as it hits the streets, but we wanted to share some of our own stories from the path to launch. Today's post covers some of the breakthrough advancements in image quality. When you're done, keep scrolling for more articles with other inside peeks from the team.

It all started with a casual conversation in the spring of 2018, on a brisk day in Tampere, Finland. It went something like this:

“Sergeant Jones* said when he's reviewing body camera footage, he wants to be able to see the details in a single frame. Right now sometimes it's blurry when people are moving too fast,” said Jason Hartford, Axon's VP of DEMS & Devices, showing a couple examples on his laptop. “He wished it could be like a photograph instead.”

“That's interesting feedback,” said Juha Alakarhu, Axon's VP of Imaging and the leader of our newly-acquired Finland imaging team.

Then they went out for mustamakkara and moved on to other topics.

Jason had nearly forgotten about the exchange until a few months later, when he was once again visiting the team in Finland, and Juha said, “Come see this. I think it will help Sergeant Jones.” He proceeded to show Jason a new algorithm the team had created that shows a single video frame in vivid detail during playback, the blurriness nearly gone. Jason's mind was blown.

Juha and his team had been quietly confronting the issue of motion blur with a series of experiments and tests, recording themselves in graffiti-covered Finnish overpasses and custom-built imaging labs filled with props to help them see how the camera would record different surfaces and colors (plus a teddy bear or two). They are wizards when it comes to imaging technology, and what began as a high-level conversation about improving video quality had turned into a little bit of magic. But they weren't just making magic for magic's sake; they were careful to focus on only the most meaningful improvements for our police service customers.

You see, usually there's a trade-off between minimizing motion blur, and the camera's performance in low light conditions, when the majority of police video is recorded (about 58% is recorded when the sun isn't out, according to our analysis). Our Finland team was able to focus on what would matter most to officers: pull off a combination of great low-light performance and incredibly clear imagery, all without negatively impacting other aspects of the camera like battery life.

The left side shows a still frame without the algorithm, and the right shows it with the algorithm in Axon Body 3. 

Speaking of low-light: in other conversations our product team has had with agency partners, the issue of lighting is always something that rises to the top. In developing the Axon Body 3, the team was especially thoughtful about which technology to select to provide the best possible low light experience for our partners. They ran through many options for things like the image sensor and optics, as well as image processing and tuning. See, Body 3 had to perform better than previous models, but not better than the human eye, as officers don't always have the benefit of watching the captured video, and have to rely on what they see and perceive at the time. So the team spent a lot of time a lot of time testing the camera in different low light conditions and comparing the video to what they could see with their own eyes. Ultimately, the team went with the combination that was going to work best for typical police service conditions and produce a realistic presentation of the scene. So although you can certainly use your Body 3 for sightseeing around Tampere, it was purpose-built for police scenarios like going from a dark exterior to a home interior, adjusting quickly like the human eye and clearly capturing the details of the environment at hand.

Again, the left shows motion blur and greater darkness, while the right shows more detail with greater clarity of the Axon Body 3. 

In short, the quality of evidence that will be captured by Axon Body 3 is higher than ever before. That can mean the difference between a criminal being rightly convicted vs. wrongly set free, or an officer being celebrated as a hero vs. castigated as a bad actor. So while it may have started as just a brief conversation, we take this stuff incredibly seriously and are looking forward to hearing how better video impacts your officers and communities. 

So please, keep the feedback coming on this or any other Axon products you use. You never know what side comment or casual mention will inspire some truly magical advancements.

Axon Body 3, which will be launched in later 2019, makes breakthrough advancements in image quality that includes minimizing motion blurs and providing the best possible low light experience.

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