Technologies Empower Police but Bring Familiar Threats

New information technologies have advanced the state of the art in law enforcement at the local level, but police now find themselves facing challenges brought about these innovative capabilities. Problems of security and adversarial use of cyber have added to traditional problems that police departments have faced for decades.

Cathy Lanier, chief of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, told the audience at the AFCEA Global Intelligence Forum in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that she believes the Metropolitan Police Department is the most automated in the country. But, even though that technology is helping law enforcement solve crimes, criminals are using technology to their own advantage.

“Cyber is creating a different breed of criminal,” Chief Lanier said. “It has changed dramatically how criminals operate. Criminals are learning how to use these new tools faster than the old criminal methods—the expertise out there is staggering.

“Street criminals are using technology much more efficiently than we are,” the chief continued. “We’ve had to learn how to infiltrate cyber to fight crimes—even violent crimes.”

Part of this effort includes greater use of the department’s fusion center to process vital data, she noted. The department is able to access a variety of different media to generate information that can help solve a case that would have been unsolvable just a few years ago.