AI in Policing: Innovating Public-Centric Digital Services

In his latest speech. DCC Simon Megicks explores how AI-driven innovation is transforming policing, enhancing efficiency, improving decision making, and fostering a more public-focused approach to public safety.

Policing is evolving and leadership must evolve with it. As NPCC Contact Management Lead, and the SRO for Digital Public Contact (DPC), DCC Megicks understands that cutting-edge technology and human-centred policing must go hand in hand. With a deep commitment to innovation and public service, Simon is championing AI-driven solutions that enhance both operational efficiency and community trust. At a special event last week, he delivered a forward-thinking vision for policing:

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Police Strategy Forum, taking the stage following the opening speech by Chief Constable Jeremy Vaughan. Following such an esteemed colleague is always daunting, as is speaking to subjects as awe-inspiring as AI and digital transformation. Fortunately for me, I had good news, and exciting progress to report.

That I was delivering this speech at a conference centre was fitting: the people who design, own and run such facilities know they have to have a deep understanding of what their customers need and want when they come to an event like that, and they have to know how to respond quickly if someone tells them they’ve got something wrong.

In the industry it’s called being customer-centric, and it’s the same approach that we take across public contact to deliver better services, more effectively and efficiently, for the public.

So, how does that work?

Well, it means we start the design of contact services by understanding three things:

• the public’s needs, wants and goals,
• the journey they’ll go on with us until those are achieved
• and the experience they’d like to have.

We follow the same approach with the officers and staff who are users of our services:

• What do you need and want from us?
• What’s your journey as a user?
• And how can we make your experience as simple and easy as possible?

The sweet spot we’re looking for meets the public’s needs and then does the same for our own people.

Our needs, we know, include greater efficiency so we can put our finite resources where they are needed most. When we get it right, it’s a win/win, and that’s what I think digitising contact can offer the public and policing - a win/win.

2029 Vision

Take yourself four years into the future and paint a picture of what public contact and engagement could look like. 2029 marks an important year for British policing, as we celebrate 200 years of the Metropolitan Police Act establishing the first professional policing service in London. Undoubtedly, this will invite renewed debate about what policing by consent means in the 21^st century.

In 2029, this is what the public will be telling us.

• I can choose how I want to make contact with the police. They’ve made it easy, whether it’s a nasty incident of domestic abuse, or some kids causing havoc in the park.
• They’ve got their own version of the NHS app so I can keep track of progress after the incident.
• I know our neighbourhood officers and what priorities they’re working on.
• I trust them.

And this is what we’ll be hearing from our officers and staff

• We have instant records of the public reporting incidents to us.
• AI helps us create an immediate THRIVE assessment.
• With our own policing app, it’s easy for them to keep in touch and send us evidence or for us to care for their needs as a victim.
• They let neighbourhood officers know what’s happening.
• They trust us.

You might think that’s the best piece of policing fiction since Line of Duty, but you’d be wrong.

The IT needed to fulfil this vision is already up and working, either deployed or in pilots, and the public is already appreciating some of the benefits of choice and easier contact.

The delivery programme is in place, with a budget for the year ahead and – with the support of the government – for the next four years.    

This is down to us. We can make this vision happen. We can make it a win/win.

Trust and Confidence

Everybody in policing is acutely aware of the drop in public confidence seen in recent years, but equally strong in our shared determination to win back what we’ve lost - you can see it in the NPCC’s decision to create a new role for a Chief Officer to lead on trust and confidence.

I’m very clear about the importance of public contact and the supporting role we play – and so are the College of Policing. Their confidence guide starts with implementing neighbourhood policing and highlights good community engagement and visible local policing, which digital tools can assist. They also identify improved public contact with victims and suspects as two of the other drivers of improvement.

So, we can be assured that delivering a high-quality service, making the public’s journey easier and the experience positive, will improve their satisfaction and their confidence. It can be achieved without needing thousands more officers to be in place, and the vision I’ve described is just around the corner, if we want to make it happen.

Rapid Video Response

Allow me to give one excellent example: that is Rapid Video Response, which gives victims of domestic abuse the option to speak face-to-face to an officer,  at the first point of contact. The call allows for early safeguarding of the victim and captures vital evidence to pursue an effective investigation. 

Pioneered by Kent Police, with more forces adopting the scheme this financial year, means more satisfaction for victims, more efficient use of police resources, and helps investigators gather evidence and secure convictions for the most difficult and sensitive crimes.

Single Online Home

Another example shows our ability to scale up national solutions: forty police forces are now using the same basic website – the Single Online Home (SOH) – for the public to report crime, ask for help, or see what their neighbourhood team is doing.  

One in seven of non-emergency reports is now online, up by nearly 20 per cent last year, and half the cost of responding to a 101 call, which are falling in numbers. A third of these people are repeat users, a good sign they prefer using this channel without any national promotion of the online reporting service.

SOH has been designed using those public-centric principles: what do the public need and want, and how do we make this an easy journey and a positive experience?

In the same platform, there were around three million visits to neighbourhood pages last year, where users can find the names of their local officers, heat maps of incidents, and information on priorities and actions taken. It is no surprise that the first couple of points in the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee rely on this content, which will be delivered across all forces by July.

This is another win/win, with a better service delivered more efficiently for the public, and this is because there’s a strong capable team at the centre in the Digital Public Contact Programme, and a strong appetite for innovation and progress at the forces with whom we work. 

My Police App

Next, there are two big innovations that can make that 2029 vision a reality. 

The next leap forward isn’t just about first contact and helping take the pressure off control rooms; it also has the potential to benefit every officer or member of staff who needs to get in touch with the public. 

Using the same approach starting with what the public needs and wants; we’ve worked with forces to develop the National My Police Portal. This exciting initiative is a two-way channel that will allow the public to stay up to date on the progress of their investigations and interact with the officer in charge of their case without having to call 101. Crucially, it’s secure; it’s two way, and it uses the government gateway log-in so there is no need for a new authentication process.

Crime journeys have been one of the first services developed, and witness care and Victims' Code Of Practice (VCOP) journeys are also being piloted. The benefits to the public are reduced time and friction when engaging with the police. We calculate it will save users 17 minutes each time they use the Portal rather than call 101.

The benefits to policing are easier engagement with victims and witnesses, plus less demand coming into control rooms because the public can’t get hold of an officer; we estimate this will save 41 weeks of call-handler time for each 10,000 cases managed via the Portal.

So, it’s already proving a win/win. What’s more, there are more exciting potential benefits: the App opens the door to the personalisation of services based on what we know about a person’s needs and wants, or what’s happening in their neighbourhood. It takes the transactional and makes it transformational.

AI-supported contact

Not everything that benefits the public is visible to them. Our second big innovation isn’t obvious to the public, but it’s transformational for our contact centres.

It concerns how we are using AI to help us make faster, better decisions about threats and risks, or automate our services and cut out some of the delays for the public, and it’s providing the capability to gather data and develop insights that will help us deliver a personalised service.

There are three key areas of work. The first we call the Natural Language Designed Switchboard

We estimate that 20 per cent of 101 demand is for other agencies like local authorities – people reporting potholes in their road, for example.

We’re about to deploy an automated triaging system that asks the caller what help they need and routes out those who do not need the help of policing. Our immediate target is to take out half that demand, or ten per cent of 101 calls. That’s 1.8 million fewer calls, providing significant national savings.

The next area is Historical Call Analysis.

Police are not required to record every call that comes into a control room and when we do, we rely on the operator’s notes.

The big step forward comes with transcribing every call so we have a documented record of what’s come in that can be searched and analysed, with suitable quality assurance in place.

With this big increase in data comes the capability to build a much better picture of demand and make connections we might otherwise have missed.

Finally, there’s what we call Live Operator Assist.

This technology, already being piloted by Humberside Police, enables a real-time search of databases while the operator continues to speak to the caller. It creates a draft THRIVE assessment that can inform deployment decisions and provide response teams with the most accurate picture possible as they arrive on scene.

Although we’re piloting these tools separately, when combined with the ability to analyse a transcript of every call, we’d expect the cumulative effect to be even more significant; all in the background, and all supportive of better human decision-making.

What’s more, there are new opportunities to use the expertise we’ve built up. Consider the challenge of countering online misinformation, for example, which the Inspectorate recently said was a weakness in policing in their critical report on last summer’s disorder.

How might we use AI tools to monitor social media in real time and help us respond to such challenges? And how might we use relationships already developed between DPC and local forces, so we do not have to build capability 43 times over?

Like the app, I have no doubt that using AI will create a win for policing and the public: for policing, a much-improved capability to use data to make better, faster judgements that will help us protect the public. This all done more efficiently, so resources can be redirected to where we need them most.

For the public, no repeating what you told the first officer, to each new one you meet, and a quicker route to the person whose help you really need, who’s better-placed to judge what that help should be.    

Our Choice

So, what will it take to achieve the biggest win/wins we possibly can?

Well, I’d suggest the task ahead is to scale up and turn these innovations into national solutions as quickly as we can, to boost satisfaction and confidence, and be more efficient and effective.

Our forecasts suggest the potential to release significant numbers from control rooms and redeploy them into front-line policing, as well as meeting the ambition in the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee to adopt new technologies that facilitate more engagement between neighbourhood officers and communities. The capability is there in the programme, and in our forces.

The challenge is invariably around our ability to make the necessary collective decisions. So, we do need to look at the governance here and ensure we have the financial flexibility to apportion costs and a data protection model that allows each force to fulfil its responsibilities as data-controllers.

This is based on the collective willingness to live up to the Prime Minister’s challenge - the public must be able to expect the same standards from policing wherever they live. A consistent national offer is vital, one that is instantly recognisable wherever you are, because people ask for help from the police all over the country, not just where they live. 

The pilots, trials and tests are proving the concepts. Now it’s decision-time. Reform if you want to invest, and we can play a key role in that reform.

Back to the Future

Let’s go back to the future again - to 2029. We’re all sat here, older, wiser and reflecting on the choice we made together, because it is our choice.

Are we sat here thinking ‘we’ve missed an opportunity to make big improvements to our service and get the public back on our side?’

Or are we sat here thinking ‘we’ve made some really good decisions; we’re in a much better place and the public, our officers and staff can all see the benefits?’    

We often find ourselves on the backfoot in policing, reacting to pressures from whatever direction. Now we’re on the front foot, because of the way we’ve worked together, innovated, and put the public first.

We can be more assertive in our decisions, as we need to be. The prize is raising confidence in policing, increasing our effectiveness at keeping people safe, whilst freeing up resources for the frontline.

Let’s move forward together. It’s in our hands.  

DCC Simon Megicks
NPCC Contact Lead, and Lead for the Digital Public Contact Programme

Effective policing leadership is grounded not only in policy and innovation, but in people. Under the direction of DCC Simon Megicks, the Digital Public Contact programme has taken a thoughtful and practical approach to advancing digital contact: this work reflects a commitment to delivering improvements that serve both the system and the public efficiently and with value for money.

We look forward to sharing further updates as this promising work continues to develop.