ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — Life is captured through a lens. Everywhere you look, it’s likely something is recording. It’s no different when it comes to a crime.
“Digital evidence is exploding in the criminal justice field. We have cell phones, Ring cameras, body cameras, dash cameras and cameras down the street and all this evidence is coming in it,” said Dr. John Cencich, a professor and criminologist at PennWest University in California.
So, what happens to all that digital evidence? Once it gets to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office, analysts have to go through it all, which could add up to hundreds of hours in some cases.
“Say you have a minor child who’s in the video standing on the sidewalk, we have to provide that video to the defense, we have to black out that child’s face,” said Rebecca Spangler, the first assistant/chief of staff for the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.
The DA’s office is going frame by frame to redact and catalog each piece of digital evidence. But with grant funding of over $350,000, the office is adding a new artificial intelligence tool to cut down on that time.
“It speeds up the time for us to review and provide the evidence to the defense and it also provides the defense with more time to review it with their client,” Spangler said.
The NICE software will redact the evidence for the attorneys, but it’s still monitored and checked by the human eye.
“If artificial intelligence is being used to catalog evidence it could be a good thing, it is a good thing. It helps reduce the amount of time prosecutors and analysts have to go through the evidence,” Cencich said.
Cencich told Channel 11 that the public shouldn’t be concerned about privacy because the evidence is already in the DA’s hands. The software is only assisting what the prosecutors are doing and there is a checks and balances system.
“This will be a tool for them to make them do their jobs better,” Spangler said.
At this point, the DA’s Office is going through the implementation stages of this new software. The goal is to have the program up and start running the evidence through it by the end of the year.
The grant funding is for two years.
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