George Cheng, co-founder of Code Four, says his police AI actually prevents over-policing by making officers document more thoroughly instead of cutting corners. He points to Mount Holly solving a homicide in three to four days instead of a month, and argues that missing details in reports, not AI, is what leads to wrongful charges.
Questions this video answers
No, not at all. Cheng argues that AI actually reduces over‑policing by ensuring more accurate, detailed reports, and that the lack of AI leads to wrongful persecution due to incomplete information.
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Some critics say that giving police AI tools might make departments faster to press charges, prosecute or survey. In essence, it could accelerate harmful policing practices. Do you think code four, your company, you just raised $2.7 million, dropped out of MIT, went to Y Combinator. Do you think your company could inadvertently contribute to over policing and, and marginalized communities?
No, not at all. This, I think this is an easy answer, right? What I noticed actually, officers without these sort of AI tools will on purposefully leave out information from the, from the body cam footage. Right. They won't ask as many questions, they won't try and get as detailed of a report as possible because they don't want to go back and write out everything that they documented in that, in that interaction. However, using AI tools like code 4, they would want to get the truth. They would want to get as much information as possible so that the AI can draft a better report for them. So that's what we've started to realize is that instead of Code four contributing to over policing, we see Code four being able to make sure that the officers were able to prosecute criminals, victims, defendants, witnesses accurately. They're able to get the most accurate informations out from these interactions to be able to file a good, accurate and cohesive rapport. Right. We, we never want to introduce any sort of over policing or like persecution wise faster charges. No, that's none of that. I would actually argue that people without these AI tools will lead to over persecution and wrongful persecution because they don't get as much information because they, sometimes they don't want to file those types of reports or sometimes they don't want to go back to the office and watch back and do all of the like, the extra paperwork because it's a burden. It's a burden for them. It's a burden for everyone inside this community. I would say like, you know, there's always two things that cops complain about. Number one is retention. Number two is paperwork. If we're able to solve one of them, we are also able to solve the other by solving paperwork. We make officers actually like report writing. We have officers call me every single day that tell me, hey, like code for makes it so that investigations feel fun again. Why did detectives sign up to be detectives? It's because they want to crack cases. They want to put criminals behind bars and they want to be able to solve really hard cases, cold cases, using us. We've seen Mount Holly do, you know, solve a homicide case that would have taken them a month in like three to four days. We've seen people actually enjoy catching criminals. We see people not getting burdened by by the amount of paperwork they have to do anymore. So, yeah, to answer your question, I would say that all of these AI tools are helping officers to rightfully persecute someone rather than wrongfully persecute.
