The Home Office has announced that it is planning on saving 38 million police hours, so that they can focus on keeping the streets safe.
This comes in response to the Policing Productivity Review, which was published by the Home Office last autumn and plans on using new technology to meet recommendations made through the review. £230 million worth of investment will be injected over the course of the next four years to ensure that tech developments can reduce the amount of time that police officers spend in the office.
Examples of the technology that can be introduced include:
- Live facial recognition
- Drones
- Knife detection
- Artificial intelligence
A Centre for Police Productivity will also be created to provide a base for the next improvements to police improvements, as it plays a vital role in the devising and implementation of ways that the rest of the review’s aims can be achieved. This could then save the equivalent of a further 20,000 police officers’ time.
Chris Philp, Policing Minister, said:
“It is critical that our police officers are out on our streets, stopping criminals and supporting the public, and we will continue in our plan to remove any barriers that keep them from this.
“I want to see cutting edge innovation ingrained in our policing, and the new Centre for Police Productivity and our reforms to cut red tape will remove the bureaucracy that holds officers back.
“By investing millions in facial recognition, AI, and new knife detection technology, we will continue to give police the tools they need to rise to the challenge of modern policing.”
According to the Home Office, the saving of only 500,000 officer hours can lead to the attending of a further 250,000 incidents of domestic abuse, or more than 300,000 burglaries.
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