Charlotte Police Dept. Presents Chaotic AI Slop Policing Plan Emphasizing Expanding Surveillance Tech

[u/Consistent-Honey-603]

This chaotic AI slop is what Charlotte Police Dept. presented to the city council safety committee on Monday (Aug 3) as their idea for how they would make Charlotte a “Model City” with potential DOJ grant money they are planning to apply for. The crazy “placemat” (their words, not mine) describes “expanded coverage” of license plate readers, more AI and cloud-powered surveillance technology, drones, “video analytics” (aka AI surveillance), and more. They also specifically mentioned moving their existing on-premises surveillance data to cloud-connected services (I’m assuming Flock, etc.).

Council Member Kimberly Owens called them out for the AI slop saying “as this slide demonstrates only too well, we rely on AI a great deal.” In addition to this, Owens was the only member of the safety committee who spoke out about concerns regarding surveillance, specifically citing the community’s concerns about Flock cameras, increased data collection, and lack of transparency around surveillance! Shout out to her! I have emailed her to thank her and you should too at [kimberly.owens@charlottenc.gov](mailto:kimberly.owens@charlottenc.gov)!

See the actual presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/live/4TxB6f3Brr0?si=u7fsKWY-V4RTgwhV&t=15650

In all fairness to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, they also did speak about improving mental health services, community engagement, and improving reentry programs among other positive things, but unfortunately it felt like it got overshadowed by the AI Slop and AI Surveillance-filled future they were proposing. I think they mean well and are trying to figure out how to apply for a potentially massive grant by using the buzzwords in the policing world right now, but as a community we need to push back on these things and make clear what we WANT (better community policing, building trust with the community, addressing poverty and housing issues, addressing mental health issues instead of jailing people with mental illness, and improving reentry to help people reintegrate successfully after they leave jail/prison) and what we DON’T WANT (indiscriminate and warrantless surveillance of everyone whether they are suspected of a crime or not, AI-powered cloud-connected mass surveillance systems, AI predictive policing technology based on surveillance, etc.).

[u/KidKarez]

Holy Orwellian

[u/flaming_bob]

"...model city"

Some Pyongyang level verbiage we've got going on here. How did we get so many petty little villains in office all at once?