The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.

Detective see a side of life the average person is never exposed to.

I spent thirty four years as a cop.

For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.

That's what I did for a living.

I was a homicide detective.

I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys.

Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.

The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law.

The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to.

Some of the content and language might be confronting.

That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.

Join me now as I take you into this world.

Besides using the phone to record a conversation with a person of interest which resulted in me being charged, I've never been accused of being an early adopter of technology.

But the technology landscape is changing rapidly in the form of artificial intelligence, and it's going to impact dramatically on crime.

Now.

I don't want to be left behind, so that's why I reached out the former detective and guest on this podcast, Graham Simpendorf to have a chat.

For the past few years, Graham has made it his business to understand AI and see how it can be used to investigate crime and also prevent crime.

Graham is the CEO of Perigon Investigations and specializes in using AI in the fight against crime.

Now we can bury our head in the sand and pretend things are not going to change, but they are.

Have a listened to what Graham has to say.

I think it will become obvious that the utilization of AI is going to be the biggest change in criminal investigation since DNA technology came into play in the early nineties.

I found the chat with Graham fascinating and informative.

If you don't want to be left behind in this brave new world of AI, have a listen to what he has to say.

Graham, thanks for I mean on I catch Killer's.

My pleasure, Garran conceiging, well, it is good to see you.

But I've got a confession to make them a little bit nervous, because when I talk technology, the amount of information I don't know can become blatantly obvious, and I don't want to come across as a dummy.

So I give you full permission to not laugh at my questions, but just explain it in the most simple terms so I can understand it.

Because when it comes to technology, I think if I can understand that, other people can understand it exactly right.

Yeah, I find the best way I'll explain it to some others, as if I'm just explained to my mum because she still struggle to turn on the computer.

Yeah, but I think so many people are in that position.

It's changing so rapidly.

Everyone's finding a bit hard to get their head around.

So yeah, yeah, well it has changed so rapidly, and when we talk rapidly, we're talking every sort of six months.

We're having conversations that six months ago you wouldn't even comprehend, have you.

Yeah, exactly right.

And I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges where we are facing in all parts of society, is how rapidly it's changing for us that are stuck in the middle trying to understand it.

But then the kids are the next generation that are picking it up so quick and bringing into their employment already.

There's a lot of challenges, but it's also exciting at the same time.

Well, I think you need to.

I half joke, but because I usually get dragged into technology, I don't embrace change too readily.

But I'm certainly aware of a situation enough.

Now you've got to get ahead of this or you're going to get left.

Behind, exactly right.

And look, we've seen a bit of that over our time, both in the cops and just in life, where we've seen all these massive changes introductions of just computers and emails and how business is done electronically tapping your phone to pay that these things were unheard of twenty thirty years ago, so now it's just.

Part of that day living.

I remember the days, and you might.

When I first started, it was manual typewriters, and then when the electronic typewriters came in, there was a couple of old detectives that why would they need an electronic typewriter?

And then these stupid things computers came in that would never catch on.

That's right.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like it was that long ago, and probably in the scheme of things it wasn't.

But that highlights I guess how rapid this is changing, and it's another technological change that's going to happen really quick in the next couple of years to five years, and we may look back in ten and almost laugh at some of these days.

Yeah, whatether you've been doing since you've been out of the police.

You've spent twenty seven years in the Victorian Police working as a detective.

How long you've been out and what you've been doing.

Yeah, well it was actually four years ago last week, so that's gone really quickly.

Took me a couple of years to really find myself again and that identity that we've probably spoken of many times, but I eventually got around to start in my own company, Paragrine Investigations and Consultancy, and in that space where you're looking at risk and security for the private sector, but also some private investigations on that higher end scale of finding people, of finding people that don't want to be found.

Thanks to some previous stuff with obviously Channel ten.

And just for the listeners that don't know that, I'm also sitting opposite a TV star in part because you're on the After you left The Left the Cops, you were on the show called the Hunted.

Yeah, that's right.

Hunted came in to our screens a couple of years ago now and that's what led me to part of this work.

So the people I met through Hunted as now who I work with and collaborate with in the private sector.

So it's amazing how these doors open up.

And the premise of that show was someone just citizens.

It was a reality TV show, but was based on the ability of law enforcement to track down people that were on the runt.

Yeah, well we did just about day and day out in the job.

But here regular citizens thought they'd give it a go, try and avoid us, and they had twenty one days to try and avoid the team of hunters for the reality show and a lot of fun.

But just amazing.

Did that upscale you like what was available?

People often assume that law enforcement is a cutting edge, but you know, when technology changes, sometimes law enforcements a little bit.

It sure did.

The team that was put together in the cyber aspect, So everything that was to do with cyber whether it was online, open source, dark web, spoofing on different machines and trying to pretend or trick the people at the other end as to who they were.

It was a whole new world to me.

And like we've just said, I had to learn and learn really quick and that's obviously led me on to now what I do in the private sector with Peregrine.

Okay, you've been on the podcast before and we talked about your career and that, but just for people that hadn't listened to that episode, just give us a bit by way of background your policing career when you're in Victoria and the police.

Yeah for sure.

So just over twenty seven years in the end before I called time on that went through all the ranks as usual, up from working the van in the streets of Melbourne and then finally into the crime squads with a little bit of time at homicide, robbery and sex offense child abuse units.

Two thousand and nine made them move up to the bush up to Wodonga up on the border with New South Wales.

Ran the detective's office up there.

Then about the next ten years through Black sat Day, Black Summer and all the different events we had up there, and that's where I still am.

Yeah, I love it.

Okay, Well, we won't revisit your police career, but if people want to hear about your police career, you had some fascinating cases and a lot of stories to tell.

The career police tend to tend to carry with them.

Another thing that you are doing is you're very much involved in the advocacy for veteran police.

Yeah, what made evaded you for that?

I think, as I sort of alluded to before that first couple of years out for me, I was struggling, and it was around those COVID times or post COVID, We're just trying to find your identity again.

People would ask what do you do for work?

And I struggled to come up with an answer and how I felt because you know, I used to be a police officer or I'm not sure what.

It was funny that because that is your identity, and I think that's what a lot of people struggle with because you go through life and regardless of everything else you do or even your life, you're identified as a policeman.

That becomes your identity.

So I do understand what you're saying.

Exactly right, So that you know that journey in that couple of years, which was pretty rough, you know, some highs and lows, but come out the other side eventually.

With that, I then saw so many mates and you would too, that are going through the same thing and almost the same issues.

Of that local identity, loss of identity, I should say, you know, what's my purpose now?

Because your purpose was to serve your community, serve your state, and you had your team and I guess you tribe around you.

And when that's gone, who am I now?

So I saw so many people struggling with that.

And it was around the same time as Police Veterans Victoria kicked off sort of a new initiative to fill that gap, because if you didn't go out on work cover, or if you didn't go out physically or mentally, well, you sort of went into a different bucket of no man's land of just you gone.

Yeah, so there's no context.

Yeah, So the Police Veterans Victoria was starting.

I think a lot of states are doing a similar thing.

So start to work with them around helping people that were getting out.

So we now either help those that are transitioning out or we help sort of the very senior people in their later stages of life that are struggling, but they could connect with us because we understand, we understand what it was like to work in the job, and we just help them through life and the simple things that they might be struggling with.

Finances, or struggling with relationships, and we just just sit down and have a coffee with them and have a chat.

So I really enjoy that.

I think it's worthwhile in that.

And I speak with a lot of military guys, and you know, they spend twelve months going through their basic training and turning them into soldiers and becoming part of the military, and then when they leave, they're just cut off.

Same with police.

We go through the academy and they're breaking you down and rolling you out as a cop.

It would be and I don't think it'll be that expense ive just the last couple of months of anyone's career, if they're going out at their own time, wouldn't it be good if they did a decompression basically before they helped them on the little things that you need to be up after.

You've left the police, It's right, all those things about just starting your own business or what's that next step, whether it's another full time role or you start your own business.

Just all those little things on life that are outside the job can be a lot for some people.

So yeah, it's needed.

There's a gap there for sure, and I think there's a lot of good space some programs beyond the badge and the police veterans do do a lot of work, but there's more that can be done, that's for sure.

Well good on you for putting some effort in there.

And I know in the conversations that I had with you too, you were touched by the murder of the two police officers down in Victoria recently.

You knew one of them very well.

Yeah, well that's that's the area I worked in, so you know, the Wangaratta areas.

You know, we would work with them almost daily, if not weekly, of working alongside some of those guys, and you know, very sad to watch that, and that's part of that, you know, grief process as well that you know had.

I had a real sort of personal struggle with I'm out but I want to help, but you have I've had to step away and how can I help in other ways?

And it was just sort of a few messages here and there to people say, you know, if you need to have a chat, I'm here, do your best, but look after yourself as well.

So you're really close to home that one, and we'll be for obviously a long.

Time because that's the type of situation especially in the small community and the rural area.

That would hit very hard.

Everyone with the people.

Yeah, exactly everyone you knew someone and the people that responded to, right from ambulance to police to the community, the pubs and just the local businesses that are affected by that search and still are.

Yeah, it's really tough.

And once that noise sort of stops and things sort of start to die down a little, that's where the real struggle can really come in, and that's when people's mental well being can care the focus.

It's just that stage you're going through the grief and then the focus of dealing with it, and then all of a sudden that goes quiet and you're left to your own thoughts.

Yeah, that's a dangerous time.

So that's the time I like to step in a little bit more than a bit closer and how you're really going, how you're doing because that noise has stopped.

Okay, all right, Well, AI is a topic of discussion today, and quite iron I've used AI to get a description.

Of what AI is.

So I'm going to read this out and then we'll just for those that don't know AI, this is the way AI describes itself.

AI or Artificial intelligence is the ability of computer systems to form tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem solving, decision making, and understanding language.

It is a field of computer science that uses algorithms and data to enable machines to perceive their environment, learn from experiences, and make decisions or take actions to achieve goals.

AI can be found in everyday applications like virtual assistance, recommendation systems and advance web search engines.

Okay, that's AI's definition of AI.

There's a lot there, and my thinking that's describing what we as a human do with our brain exactly.

Yeah, and that's I guess that artificial intelligence piece isn't AI.

So yeah, but it's only as good as what develops on itself.

So as it sort of alluded to, it's doing large analysis of data or problems that the human brain or the human would take hours and hours and hours, if not days a week to do, and it'll do it rapidly in seconds.

Well, using a basic example, if we were talking, if we keep it related to a crime or a court matter, if case law, a particular type of case law and precedence is very heavily relied upon in court case law, what's a statue?

What are the proofs of certain offense?

All that is readily available on AI, that's right.

And before that would be a case of we all had those old law books that we'd keep in our office and have the actives looking through case law trying to work out what way to approach an investigation or present a matter at court.

It's incredible what's readily available the fingertips.

That's right, and it's so reallyvailable.

But then it's a matter of also then interpreting that to your case or your particular set of circumstances.

So yeah, it's great to be able to draw that data in from so many volumes of the back walls or fill with those books that we talked of, where would you go to find that?

Whereas the AI can take you straight to the piece that you need, that piece of legislation or the case law, and then you, as a human element, can apply that to your case or your situation.

So it just saves you so much time.

And I actually swear by now and obviously now that's part of my world.

Well, like going through the detect this course, and I would imagine it would have been very similar for you.

A lot of it was learning virtually parrot form about the Crimes Act.

Yeah, the proofs of the fence, that type of thing just drummed into you, so you knew what it was.

Now that's readily available.

Yeah, no excuse now to miss an element of a charge or a point of proof to prove a case.

It's all there, ready to go.

And I guess that's part of where AI could be used to assist going forward in that next step of what does this look like for investigators?

So when we talk AI like, I think you can have the conversation on the street now on ninety percent that people know what you're talking about and acknowledge their views in some form.

But when has that sort of come come in the favor.

I think on the last couple of years it really everyone sort of embraced the idea because it's been everywhere, whether it's you know, your chat GPT to help draft things or research things.

We've seen it within the school.

I don't think my sixteen year old daughter will use chat GPT from how and again for some stuff, But you know it's I think we've really sent the last couple of years and people are starting to obviously lean into that a bit more and scratch a bit deeper than just saying, oh, AI AI is everything.

AI can be everything, but it actually you need to look at what is the problem or what is issue I'm looking to solve here?

What do I want AI for?

That's probably the key point, because you know, you can't just say, let's just great AI into investigations.

Well, what part of an investigation do you want to look at how it's come into play?

Yes, So that's the broader question that needs a lot more thought, And there's so many elements to it, Yeah, which I'm sure we'll go through.

But it's someone bought up and that it was going back probably twelve months or so, and it was someone sitting here that we're talking about how AI could be used, and there was a case where the courts rejected it because you know, and I can't remember the specific offense, but if a police officer had reasonable cause to stop and detain a person police officers, So what was acting on my mind at the time, And someone answered that I did because it wasn't facial identification, but something came up from a computer system, so the police officer was being cross examined by the barrister breaking it down so you didn't have reasonable cause and break it down to the point where the officer said, well, actually I didn't, but I had it based on that.

Then the matter was was thrown out.

Yeah, well yeah, at what point did you form your opinion or your belief?

Well, I didn't form.

It what was based on Yeah, So chat GPT, I've embraced it in the past, i'd say twelve months.

But explain to people what that is.

Yeah, well chat GPT is I guess, a whole large system of data that's worldwide, but it is.

It's not Australian, so it's obviously has a bias towards that Western world, but not particularly Australia.

But you can ask it anything.

You can ask it to write you a script for a book or a movie, right you write you a novel, write you emails, or ask about the pyramids.

And it's just a large data set of all the information basically that draws off the wear or whatever data is actually put into it.

So yeah, it's very broad, but you can just about ask it to do anything or produce anything, produce a photo, produce a recording and anything.

So it's the sky's limit.

With my reluctance to use it, and I pay homage to my son, and he dragged me into the world about using chat GPT.

I argue that it feels like it's cheating, like it was to do a report, like a report on something.

It might be a report to a council about something.

He's gone, you can do that on chat GPT and what are you talking about, Like, I know how to do reports, and he posed a hypothetical question.

We put it to chat GPT and I'm reading it.

Jesus, that's done it better than I could.

And my reluctance was so I argued, back, game, but that's cheating, Like I want to do it.

I'm capable of doing it.

And he said he said these words to me, and it sort of resonated with me and changed my thinking on it.

He said, when you went to university and did you degree, well, you were relying on textbooks to get information.

And then as it evolved, will you relying on the internet to get information to help with it?

Well, this is just the next step.

It's evolved.

So you're not going to embrace technology.

You stick with your textbook stat you'll go really really good if you can find the many Moore.

That is how it's evolved, isn't.

It's something that we've got to embrace.

There's no ethical or moral issue against using the available technology.

No, I don't think so, and I think it's time saving for me.

I embrace it almost every day.

And as you said, it's writing either report or writing an email.

It could be absolutely anything, but it's that time saving of yes, you can write it, but it spits it out to you in a format that you can just about cut and paste into your email or your document, but you still fact check it.

I think past some of those issues where people have been caught out is these large reports that might be a couple hundred pages.

You've got to have that human lens across it to check it and put in your own style.

So I know how I like to write and draft things.

And it depends on who your audience is.

If you know that person, so you add your personal lens, or if it's to counsel, then you add your facts.

But you're just fact checking and it just saves so much time.

So that report that you probably would have written yourself may have taken thirty minutes.

To an hour or so to really your.

Head round the structure, because that's that's the slow part of once I've got the structure in my head or I'm seeing it on paper.

Yeah, that's why I've got to address and that that's what that provided I've had, I've used it and tested it.

I was looking at a particular investigation and looking at the people involved, and it came back with the wrong names, like I knew the investigator involved or the detective involved, and I asked the question that came back and I corrected and said, well that person wasn't even involved in that case.

I got back up.

We're sorry, we'll correct that.

So there are failings of it.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and that's the I guess my main point to those I talked about this, Yeah, you must fact check it.

You must look at it and have a good read of what it is.

So you can't just cnut paste and send.

You'll get caught out.

And I think there's already been some pretty large organizations in that space.

We won't talk about that, but yeah, it's a tool, and I think if the more efficient and effective you can using that tool, it just adds value.

That's what I'm finding I think you talk about people getting called out.

I think there was a barrister that was closing submissions and citing and it was identified that those cases don't even exist.

So clearly he or she embraced that using that AI to present a closing argument, which I'm sure it could do very well.

But you do need to fact check over it, don't you You do?

Yeah, that's right, and otherwise are very embarrassing if not the implications there.

Yeah, that's pretty embarrassing professionally, but yeah, you got a fact check.

You've got to look at what it is.

But for me, it's about saving that time.

It's not having to worry about the structure.

Yeah, particularly for the larger pieces.

So yeah, it's a great benefit to me day to day.

Looking at let's pick one aspect of AI, how it could be used in criminal investigations.

A large part of our work as police officers were locating.

Invariably you're looking for the offender, it could be the victim you're looking for, or even witnesses.

Facial identification.

Where are we at with that?

Yeah?

So facial recognition technology or FRT well advanced globally, we're a bit behind the eight ball here in Australia and we're finding a bit of that is the case across the park.

But it's well advanced.

It's actually really accurate these days, but it's as only as good as what you can put into it.

So again, like we've experienced, you get your CCTV back of your drive by shooting or your people that have run away from committing their murder, and you might have some really ordinary footage.

That's the point where I can hopefully step up me to clean it up, and then I guess run that facial recognition technology across data sets that are already available, and that's the gap that is needed.

So you remember in the days you'd actually to put your circular out across around the police.

Came up in the front over the front cat owner of the police stations, in the detective's office, and.

I think if I never had one result, because it was fresh in that that investigator's mind, I put that guy, yeah, in last week, that's this fellow.

But out of twenty seven years, that's one.

So asking people to do that internally, but then we've seen the amount of times you would then ask the public because it's your last resort we need to find this person and putting that face image out to the public, and that that has its own inherent issues, doesn't it.

So you get everyone ringing.

In the false sightings.

Yeah, different things.

You know, I know that person and you end up with another hundred crime stoppers investigation reports that you have to go into.

How accurate it is it?

Like, obviously a picture of my face if I was seen walking down the main street of Sydney, is it that capacity that they could say, oh, if you're looking for jubilant, he was in the main street of Sydney.

Hours agoinndred percent Yeah and some and we talked about time and saving.

It's very accurate.

And that's what I mean by globally it's there.

What's it go from?

The the measurements between the eyes, the type of the noose, everything.

Yeah, so many different points identification.

And you come through like you do as you come through customs and that's the FRT technology piece.

But how you then put that into investigations is the tricky bit because you need to know if you're going to be comparing against other systems, whether it's driver's licenses or your corrections photos.

They're the data sets you want to compare against.

But there's the ethical aspects and the privacy concerns that go with that.

So that's that's probably the piece that still needs to be plugged in here in Australia.

We're going to protect people's private yeah, yeah.

And that's the issue where if we're using some of these systems that are offshore, you're sending an image of someone that is one of our citizens that may or may not be your accused.

We're sending that offshore overseas.

Right, that's what needs to be more sovereign based, and it needs to be developed here for here, for our culture, for our country.

And what's the dangers of that?

You said we need as a sovereign system and we need police to have the proper authority or law enforcement to have the proper authority, Like we don't want law enforcement to know every every movement you'll make, correct, So what's how does that?

How does that work?

Do law enforcement need their own system or what's the how do we protect.

Or that that?

You just led me straight into what my business is.

So thank you, So I fed the music play.

Look, there's a number of aspects there.

Number one's ethics and there are nine principles that the Australia and New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency have given to all law enforcement across the country.

Those nine principles are trying to raiw them all off the top of my head, but ethics, accountability and so many different finite points that exactly what we're talking about protecting the community's interests.

But there's also the law enforcement site.

Community expects us to catch your murderers, catch your sexual offenders, so that in that regard, it's got to be built in my view here for here, because we don't want our data system, particularly a government data system, being offshore.

We can't raise so many issues, doesn't it security?

National security, individual security?

So if it's built here for here, we've got more control of it so it can be independently audited.

You can actually have a conversation with the people that are building those large models and develop it for our bias.

So if we're putting in a bias that has an American or a UK lens, then you may be drawing in UK case law or looking at American systems or American footage.

You need to plug it into what is Australian and purely Australian, but you need the access to those data sets and that's where the nervousness is.

So I'm already talking with some police forces and accompanied by the name of main Code and Dave Lemfords and his team at main Code that are building these massive data centers, incredible investment.

We're talking millions and means of dollars of investment to have the data centers here in Australia, which is step number one.

And in the data centers, they'd have all all that information captured and to access that it would be by application.

If we were looking for a person that was wanted, we would track their phone, but invariably you needed authority to track the phone.

You need the approval from the core that it needed to be signed off at some level.

Is that the type of safeguards you're talking about, because we don't need to track you with your phone now.

But if I'm going where is that Graham, I need to speak to him about this matter and put it out there.

Okay, he was here three hours ago, he's here right now and we go grab you.

Is that the type of privacy that you're concerned that could be invaded?

Yeah, exactly right, and that's why it still needs to have a process, which I'm sure the e Safety Commissioner is looking at.

It still needs to have a process of authority that needs to go through, so you need an independent order to look at.

In our scenario, we're looking at independent orders to oversee in fairness to what we're trying to build.

Not dissimilar to in Victorio's the Office of Police Integrity, so the OPI would overlook all.

We have the equivalent of le here in New South Wales.

Yeah, So that's the level of trust that people need to have in any system that's going to be built.

It's very difficult to have that trust if you're going to build it off Suore.

So we build it here for here and independently ordered by Australians.

But in answer to your question, I guess in my view, crimes against the person, so your homicides are robberie are.

The things that we should be able to access it for.

Yeah, they're the things that I think our community would expect us to be able to act on.

But you ought to be able to plug into these systems.

So in the scenario, if you're just wandering down circular key or wandering down Burke Street, Melbourne.

You need to be able to plug into those systems and that's where the collaboration and partnership needs.

Are they government systems or because businesses have their CCTV the licensed premises, Every business has cameras.

There are we talking about gathering all that information or only government authorized ones?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I guess it depends on the appetite on how far it goes.

So some are privately run.

Obviously, the City of Melbourne runs the Safe City Center cameras in Victoria, but Victoria police already have access to that life.

Again, it's about doing it smarter.

So if you are looking for someone that's just committed a very serious crime, we need to know where this person is now.

They've just fired a shot through some building in middle of Melbourne.

Here's the image, we've got it.

It's just going to expedite things.

So rather than trying to look at phone records or a triangulation that can be a little bit accurate, if you can plug that into that system, it will Using the facial recognition technology, it does have the capacity to find them immediately and then alert us where that person.

Is how are this then with people going on the run in this people often ask me that you know, and you've got the alleged shooting by Desmond Freeman that it's been months that they're looking for.

But the type of technology we're talking about now is only applicable to the environment, and if he's in the bush, that we haven't got that advantage.

No, that's right, and that's why I think they're brought in and I'm not that close to what I think they're brought in thermal imaguring and different things into that area.

But look, I worked up there for so many years and you were doing searches for people that were lost and they wanted to be found and we couldn't find them.

To count it rough and yeah, desolate, it's.

Just so vast, so's it's a challenging time.

But look, I'm just so glad that they're continuing that search and continue to fight to bring into justice.

Oh well, they're putting all the resources in.

Then he needs we need to find out what's happened and where he is, where he's still with us or if he's if he's not.

Yeah, but you raise a good point, and people out there, would you know, that's my it's my right to aout to walk around the city without being tracked by the government.

I guess the lens that we're I'm trying to put on and hopefully we get to the point is the systems won't be bothered by you.

It's looking for the person that's just done the drive by shooting, or committed the murder, or committed the sexual assault.

And of course everyone agreed we want that person court.

That's the piece that needs to come in here, not tracking everyone single movements, and that's the lens of auditing those systems to make sure that they're being accessed appropriately.

No different to any of the systems we've gone through in policing, where you know, if you access it for the wrong reason, high chance you'll lose your job.

Are we in a situation like the way AI is rapidly evolving?

That really sickly people?

The government, big brother will know where each and every one of us are at any time.

Well, if you're commuted a serious crime, yeah, yeah, so Look, it's hard to The more urban we are, the more you're going to you're going to go onto.

Counter I think from yeah, I look at my day today, I come here in my phone would be pinging off towers.

I go and use a credit card at the store.

They know I'm there.

My car goes through down the road.

There's images of that.

It's pretty much where we're at now, isn't.

It's right, it's there now, and that's where a I will expedite that and bring it all together.

So like a definition at the start was taking large sets of data large it's information pulling it all together.

There's already AI out there that you know, the old case of either an armed robber or something, you'll go to twenty thirty different places and get all their CCTV.

You collect it all because you don't want it to get lost.

Some systems rewright after a week or a month, and you don't want to be two months down the track and go, oh gosh, they actually dumped the gun in a being around the corner.

You want and timely, and it was time consuming going and going through that.

So there is AI already of al that you can get all of those thirty different businesses cameras that might Fragument's sake have ten cameras each.

There's three hundred cameras you've got to go through well and all all of that time.

I remember how time consuming that was.

We'd grabbed great, we've got footage from ten CCTV cameras, but it would take weeks to go through.

And how do we give that job too or you know, you had to go through it all yourself, And that's that's the piece, that's the saving of times, so you can prevent the next time robbery or of a next sexual assault because you're straight onto that person's identity much faster than you would have been if you're trying to go through it all yourself.

The argument, and I've heard this argument when we talk fingerprints, I hear in DNA when DNA evolved and that, and people would go, you know, like there was a suggestion that fingerprints and DNA should be taken from everyone because people assume we've got fingerprints of everyone.

We don't necessarily have fingerprints of anyone.

They've got to have come before the system with DNA, Like why not get everyone's DNA on the day that they're born.

Why not get everyone's fingerprints?

Everything like that, And people would often say, well, I've got nothing to hide, I don't care if people know.

I was of that view earlier.

Maybe throughout my police career, I didn't give it a lot of thought.

Since I've left the police, and certainly you know the battles I've had with court system and taken on Big Brother, it does sort of, it does scare me.

And so what I'm saying that public opinion will Who cares?

If you don't do nothing wrong, You've got nothing to hide.

But there is an aspect of an invasion of privacy that I'm not not comfortable with.

I got to agree with you with that.

I'm exactly the saying through my policing career, if you'm not only wrong, what have you got to worry about?

Yeah, But now on the other side of the fence, I think it's really it's more important to me to have that security that number one, you know, it's my information, it's my DNA to want it out there and just say taking on Big Brother, and we've seen errors in cases through DNA, We've seen errors in criminal cases.

So it's important to have the integrity of these systems built right from the outset.

If we're looking at AI, how it's built right.

Well, it's interesting and that's been the theme of your discussion is about the integrity and the ethics involved in it, because it is something that could be abused.

I think a lot of us felt aggrieved by the during the COVID times where everywhere you had the g you had the scan in, and that that frustrated me.

I didn't like that because police or the government was saying, look, will not be used for anything other than tracking the COVID case, I'd say bullshit, because because I know if there was a murder, yeah, I would get access to that information.

Where if I was looking for you during CAVID, then you'd scanned into such and such a place, we'd get that information.

Yeah.

Well we had an example of that on the border.

So we're on the border with New South Wales which is obviously closed, and we had a shooting in central Wodonga.

We got the car really quickly because it was not much footage to go through.

When we went, oh, we know what that car is, We put that information out to the checkpoint, bang got him ten minutes after the shooting.

Different to scanning in somewhere.

But big Brother was there the whole time, and I was very anxious about that that whole time, and I didn't enjoy the job at that time.

I think a lot of cops went, you know, I didn't sign up for.

This well down in Victoria and I saw it.

I just got out of the police before the lockdowns happened.

And yeah, I wouldn't have liked to be the police officer in those times.

I think we were forced to enforce the law, which is our job and what we sign up to, but I don't think our hearts would have been in a lot of it.

In the nine pm.

Curfews, curfews trying to stop kids from playing in parks and oh my god, don't.

Go the end of the beach.

All right, Well, we could do a whole nother podcast with you and I winding about that.

But yeah, it was that just to me, it showed how power corrupted it is.

It's a really important piece of the discussion on development of AI and what does it mean.

And that's again and so to go on about that's why it needs to be done here so we can control them.

But and that was part of my passion of getting involved in the first place, because I could see a real need for it.

But I can actually see how this can benefit saving so much time for investigators quickly identifying offenders to stop that second offense, but also help in the court process.

You know, we've got horrendous weights and delays through court the lawyer piece on the other side for them to understand all the data information.

There is a real space for it, but it's got to be developed ethically, morally, and I feel what better person to, I guess, develop it than someone that's been through it and lived it and knows what's needed.

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Give me a sense of how it changes the way with approach a criminal investigation.

And you know we're talking you have only left four years ago, so it's relatively recent.

How do you see the potential for it to change criminal investigations.

Yeah, I'd probably give you a real basic case, so you know, a drive by shooting or a murder if you will, so to get away car.

You get it on footage, so you know the initial action is always canvassing witnesses chemissing for CCTV, it's everywhere if it's urban.

So you do get your piece of CCTV that has the car driving off at speed away from the shooting.

We've sent it on TV a million times and you would have sat around the table in the office talking about is that a twenty nineteen hold in Commodore vs VX?

What type of car is that?

You need to identify exactly what it is.

AI will be able to do that, and that's something we're looking at with Peregrim has been able to build a data set of vehicles.

It's a known quantity.

There's no it's not like a fingerprint where everyone has one.

There's only so many models of vehicles in the world.

So an AI program developed for law enforcement would quickly identify immediately that is a twenty nineteen hold in Commodore, certain model, the rims are changed or whatever aspect or whatever unique piece of that car is and it's one hundred percent accurate.

See that it self would be beneficial.

And you just brought me crashing back into my time in the told Up squad when we're always tracking cars and we would go to the manufacturer and this is what we've got then take a long time to get that and it was always opinion based.

But you're saying with AI the right system bank, this is a car you're looking for.

Well, it's a fixed data set, isn't it.

So you know if you're loading in every single car that's ever been manufactured, it'll find it, and it'll find it quickly.

So we know the power of knowing that piece of information investigation as early as possible is critical.

And then we talked before about if you did not know that vehicle and you go to the media or the public about can you help us find this car or we're looking for this particular car, and if you get it wrong, you can' undo that.

No, Well that was you had to hold back sometimes too, because if you put out the wrong one, okay.

Well that's a real basic example of and that can then change your tactics.

So if you've quickly identified the car, if you quickly identified what make a model it is, you may then be able to look at the identity of that vehicle, whether it's the red j O and plug it in.

But then you can track it across where it went from there.

So there's a lot that can change in that simple example of just that one piece of knowledge of knowing the make and model.

If you get away car, okay, I can see the benefits there.

And if we can get and the old adages, get the police out on the streets where we need them.

And I see in Victoria, I heard them say that they're bringing in a policy where they're going to have more public servants doing work than police have done.

The free up the police because they're struggling with I think that's a good idea.

Maybe if we embrace AI in law enforcement and don't quite often I found in law enforcement and you would have seen this too.

When technology changes invariably we wait a little bit.

Yes, then we're reaching out to the experts outside the police.

Can you give us a hand?

It'd be good if police got on the front foot, law enforcement got them on the front foot.

Yeah.

Yeah, And that's I think the trigger point at the moment is without telling government or police and what they need to do.

Now I lived on the other side, you can't do it on your own one funding, it's not cheap.

And show me a government that's got millions of dollars to invest in AI for their own system.

I've been at a few conferences lately around the frustrations that are shared by very senior police saying when is the corporate we going to help because it's needed, and that's I guess where we come in.

And it's certainly not cheap.

You know, if there's investors there that want to come on board and kive me your hand, that'd be great, but you've got to align yourself with the right people.

This isn't about profit.

It's about building something that will work for our community, to make it safer and as you say, make the investigators time more out on the road rather than behind a computer putting briefs of evidence together, going through CCTV, trying to identify a vehicle, or going through phone records, even those things, you know, hours and hours and hours at work to work through that.

People think we have that already, the amount of conversations I have with corpus that don't the cops have this?

Sorry, No, it's you know, it's funded through state governments and federal governments.

It's a real challenge.

So there are some partnership out there.

I know monash Uni and Australian Federal Belief have an amazing program through the ALEX Labin Artificial intelligence for law enforcement community safety.

They do an amazing amount of work around the trail exploitation and trailed sexual material online.

They're using AI to help with that, which is fantastic because it protects our kids.

But there's more pieces if you're done, and that sort of circles all the way around to AI can be anything.

But you've got to find out what is the problem you want to solve.

And it's the same in law enforcement.

You've got to pick what's going to be the most effective and efficient way to probably save time, which is cost of cops out on the street, and understand why they're employing public servants because the endgame is you want to have more visible.

Presence and at the risk of losing listeners because it's so boring and I know you would have found it boring.

But the admin side of policing, even to the point of rostering, how much time that would take up.

Now, AI like chat GPT could work out the roster so simply so we could three out administrative things like that.

For sure, And and the cost in labor alone huge.

There's there's you know, I'd hate to think how many cops are back out on the street.

Well, handling of exhibits, tracking, and I know and I assume Victoria would have been the same that New South Wales.

We upskilled on that because gone were the days of the old exhibit book And where is that missing exhibit type?

Oh, that's right, it was in Grahams that's right.

Yeah.

So all that should in fact free up police to do what police should be doing, and that's enforcing the law and investigating crimes when they'd occurred.

Yeah, exactly, And that's that's the point.

I guess that's where we are at, this rural juncture of do we lean into it, do we trust it?

And you've got to have the confidence and partner with the corporate to trust to build that.

And there's a space that law enforcement are heavily involved in that for sure, but you've got to be able to fund it.

And you know that's the big piece.

It's not cheap and you need those checks and balances.

And like when DNA came in, and I think it was early nineties and the first case, it was one of the early cases that DNA was used.

It confused hell Adam the first start, it was a horrific murder of an elderly lady in her house and she'd been sexually assaulted.

And we had a good suspect, and we got the suspects DNA and it didn't match, and that everything else was pointing this is a person.

And eventually we got on to another person the DNA and there was no admissions from him initially, but the DNA told us this is a person you're looking for because seamen was left at the crime scene and it blew me away in that.

Okay, we can charge a murder a person with murder based on this information.

But that's how things evolve, isn't it correct?

And that's what juries tend to expect.

Now to where's the forensic evidence, where's the CCTV?

How did we ever convict anyone before we had all this?

We look now in twenty twenty five.

If the case doesn't have DNA, it doesn't have a fingerprint, doesn't have an eyewitness identification.

And if it's at scientifically based evidence, it's irrefutable.

It carries a lot more weight with the jury.

But we've got to be careful because is it Queensland.

The laboratories it was having a lot of problems and it didn't stand up to the scrutiny.

That's right, and that could be the case where we fall into the AI.

Well if we don't make sure we have the proper standards and regulations.

That's right, and that's why it's so critical to build purpose, purpose built.

Data analysis and evidence gathering.

A lot of the work on the complex investigations, particularly when I was in homicide and you worked homicide, you are overwhelmed with information that comes in, and that is the real struggle.

You have to just sift through what's important and what's not.

You get a good analyst and an analyst and the way that what I considered the good analyst in my time was someone that could retain information, could reach statements and pick up little pieces of there was a red car scene in this witness's statement.

Someone else mentioned the red car in that street two weeks ago, These little things AI.

I could see AI just freeing that up exactly.

It's solving problems.

It's understanding the data and understanding information.

And if you're plugging all that information into your case and into your system, and you want to know whereas a red car mentioned every single time, and every witness statement or every bit of CCTV footage.

It won't only just tell you where it is, it can timeline it for you, so you know, trying to put the chain of events and chain of circumstances of your case together when you're definitely tracking someone that's been over a matter of weeks in the lead up to something, or post conviction or post offense as well, it'll timeline it all that for you, which it will do it in seconds, but then you've got to validate and then you've got to check it.

But it's removing those hours and hours and hours.

And we're not just talking four or five hours.

I think we've said before.

You know, it's it's weeks, if not months, of putting a brief together.

I still remember and that it was a hard time in policing.

When I say hard, it was worthwhile.

But it was sitting in an office for about four months on my own, going through a broof of evidence, reviewing an old homicide three kids.

It was a serial killer, it was a bowerble one and reading statements that were taken in the nineties that weren't entered on computers, so you couldn't you couldn't use the computers to find the information and literally going through highlighting this and then have to keep my head around the whole investigation so I'm not missing anything.

We didn't have an analyst attached to the investigation.

In fact, I was the only one working on it.

So it was literally sitting in a room for three to four months making notes and making sure I didn't miss any information.

And I look back at something like that now, and that was it was my When I say mind, I mean it was just.

Hard work hard.

That's a hard slog.

And that could be literally done in a matter of minutes.

Correct one hundred percent can and actually then trying to identify where your gaps are or where you need to be if you can train it to think like an investigator.

And that's probably I'm most worry about, is we don't then get lazy investigators.

We're not twenty years down the track going.

These teams can't think for themselves, they don't think outside the box.

You've still got to have that skill.

You bought up something that this is my silly mind ticking over.

I learned how to do AFFI David's.

I learned how to type up a fact sheet.

I learned how to take a witness statement.

That was the skills I believe I had as a detechnique.

They were hard earned skills.

It didn't come natural.

It was trial and error and learning and experience and learning every day.

Now to do a set of facts, you could, in fact, just put in brief information and ask the computer system AI to present a set of facts for the local court, or a set of facts for the district court, or this is going to the Supreme Court, a comprehensive set of facts with reference to where the material was from.

Just a blame pro a, Thanks Gerry.

Sorry, I didn't I think of that business.

But that is so difficult to do and learn.

Now, if I had read set of facts that came from AI, I could, because of my experience, look and go no, that's not right, we don't need that.

But if people don't learn that skill to start with, what you've just said is a con And that's not just we're talking law enforcement here, we're talking detectives.

Because it's a world well winner.

But it's across the board, isn't it.

Embarrasters, lawyers, you know, it's everyone across the board.

But I feel the benefits far our way, the negatives and I think that's an important piece of moving through to that next stage of embracing it.

But make sure we don't lose sight of how we then skill our people to fact check properly to make sure that it's accurate, because it will cross reference.

So you get one hundred statements from your homicide brief or trying to statue homicide brief, give me those facts and circumstances for the court.

It'll cross reference everything for you and your exhibits and timeline it for you and put in the language that the courts want, that the barristers want.

Defense can better understand the case and your prosecutors can better understand it.

So it should be in theory expediting all of those concerns and your case conferences are very clear as to what other points and issuing here and anyone can agree, rather than going through volumes and volumes of all wielding trolley's worth of evidence into the court.

It definitely has its place, but we need to make sure that people still keep their skills in, as you said, understanding what the courts want, what the investigators need, and what the law is.

Well.

To give an example, I'm just thinking when you were saying that it wasn't unusual to get a twenty page statement in a homicide investigation.

That sounds a lot.

But if you're going nothing down in the finite detail, or you do a URISP interview and an electronic interview, that might take three or four hours.

So there's a lot of information there, a lot of work.

And when I was leading the investigations, or when I was working on the I was doing the summary of it.

But when I was leading the investigations, I was getting people to summarize this fift It might be a fifty page transcrip, summarize this in very condensed version, highlighting the key points, all the areas that I might need, all the person running the investigation might need to pull from that statement or interview.

That's done, is it?

Yeah?

And I can see a space where we even not now to looking further, where your AI is actually there with you in the interview room and you've got all your data sets there with you.

As you're asking the questions of the accused, I can tell you, hey, you're missing this piece.

And it could do it live.

And I think the technology is even there to do that now, isn't it.

Yeah?

It's just again building it so that it's secure, its safe.

The integrity piece is part of it.

But you don't want to walk out of an interview room and go I really forgot to ask that question.

Well, the skill of a great detective was to sit down.

I always thought this was one of the most valuable skills that detective had, was the ability to extract information from a witness.

And if you had AI sitting there and you're my witness, I'm getting the statement, and sometimes you've been up for twenty four hours, Yeah you're tired and getting the statement, and then you come back and you've I.

Forgot that it's wrong.

You could have AI going you haven't covered off on when he last spoke to the victim.

There's something as simple as that.

It's right, yeah, yeah, exactly right.

It has a place for it, and you don't want to have to be going back to reinterview or take another statement.

I want to retraumatize the victims by going back, because every time you turn up on someone's doorstep, I'm back again.

What do they want now?

The anxiety everything, So you're there once you're there thorough and the AI is looking at your entire case, And as you said, a very skilled investigator knew their whole case, knew everything in and out.

But nowadays, how many are they working on it?

Once there's a human element that can forget that, but that's where AI has its real appetite to assist an investigator.

It's another tool, and I think if we look at it has another tool, it's going to be a great benefit to community.

Do you think the law enforcement will embrace it?

I hope so, I really hope so.

I think it'll free up time.

But essentially the purpose is to identify offenders quicker than what we have been in the past.

You know, who is this person?

Do we use facial recognition technology?

Do we use data sets of phone records or statement taking to help us better understand evidence and the case?

Well, to me, what you're describing and what AI brings to it, it'd be like if I hand picked the world's best criminal investigation team and they're at my disposal.

That's the best way to look at it.

Yeah, yeah, Like I'm thinking with all that, some of the investigations and even we were having to chat the other other day, and I think we're both carried the trauma from it those late nights when a murders happened, or are serious crimes happen and you need a listening device or something put in place, and you're sitting there at two o'clock in the morning typing up and after David, that's going to be read by a Supreme Court judge, and how exhausting that was, and get it in the terminology that's appropriate, and you could actually blow the application if the judge gets cranky because you haven't laid it out properly.

That could be done in a tenth.

Of the time easy, and then some literally seconds for it to process all of the evidence that's in the system already and put out an affidavit in the right format.

Then you just got to fact check it.

You can have someone awake enough to make sure that it's fact checked.

You keep coming back to the fact check.

That's going to be the failings, isn't it, Because I would imagine one time something slips through the system and everyone goes, well, this is why we can't use AI.

There's going to be a reluctance and police will hide behind that or law enforcement will hide well, you can't trust that because someone submitted the facts and had the wrong name or something as stupid as that.

That's what we're going to make sure.

So you need someone actually still putting a signature to it.

You can't just go, oh, well that was a computer.

It's not our fault.

Yeah, And that's what we've got to work with law enforcement agencies.

Develop the policies and procedures that sit with the AI.

Don't compete against it.

Let's work with it and have your policies and procedures that talk to it.

This is what I expect from you.

So your supervisor as a fact checking, we're doing that now.

They so we had to, like I'd have a junior officer prepare an affidavid and I would have to sign it off before it was forwarded.

And that was me fact checking that the person knew what they were doing and it was truthful and accurate.

That's right.

You just haven't got the poor young constable doing four or five hours on an affidavit.

We'll take a break here.

When we come back, we'll break it down and talk about some investigations on how that could actually help.

I'd like to look at the unsolved homicide, the cold cases too.

On my mind, sort of the ticking ovor how I could play a part in that.

But it is a brave new world.

Isn't it.

It certainly is Gary, And I think.

I might be able to do myself out of a job, would I like, as in hosting a podcast like nothing's off the table, is it?

No?

That's right.

That's where everyone's a bit anxious and a bit nervous about what does that future look like?

Replacing placing jobs.

But well, I want to talk talk about court too, because I think that it's going to be a big change in court, not just the role of solicitors and whether it be defense or prosecution, but magistrates and judges and yeah, interesting, Okay, we'll be back back shortly.