How AI helped catch a drug trafficker

Artificial intelligence isn’t just about ChatGPT – far from it. In New York, for example, police used an AI tool to help identify and catch a drug trafficker, simply by analyzing his suspicious driving habits.

Forbes recounts this incredible story, which took place last year in Scarsdale, a small town in upstate New York. In March 2022, the police took an interest in the behaviour of a vehicle registered to a certain David Zayas.

By checking a database of more than 1.6 billion license plate records collected over the last two years throughout the state, an artificial intelligence system determined that the car regularly followed routes typically used by drug traffickers. It was found that the vehicle made nine trips from Massachusetts to various locations in New York, between October 2020 and August 2021 – routes known to be used by narcotics dealers.

Based on this information, officers pulled over David Zayas and searched his vehicle, finding 112 grams of crack cocaine, a semi-automatic pistol and US$34,000 in cash inside.

The police called on the services of a company called Rekor to analyze these traffic patterns. In fact, it wasn’t speeding or inappropriate behavior on the road that gave the trafficker away, but the routes he took, which an artificial intelligence system immediately judged to be suspicious.

This story shines the spotlight on a technology that has been in use for years by the American police, namely the use of license plate reading systems to identify drivers whose licenses have expired or who are wanted for previous offenses.

Today, artificial intelligence is boosting these possibilities by analyzing drivers’ behavior through their driving habits and preferred routes. The system currently uses 480 cameras across the state, scanning 16 million plates a week.

Thanks to the information gathered, including license plate numbers and camera geolocation, police officers can now determine whether certain routes are more “suspicious” than others.

The New York Police Department is known for being at the cutting edge of technology, since it now uses a number of surveillance robots and robot dogs to monitor and intervene in certain confined spaces as part of specific missions in the city. – AFP Relaxnews