Summary: Modern technologies offer enormous opportunities for police and for criminals. Most crimes have a digital element. Rapid technological advances have led to new tools such as facial recognition, camera-equipped drones, and fingerprint scanners. These advances provide enormous amounts of data to be assessed and interpreted, generating a role for artificial intelligence in modern policing. They also create new tensions between protection of citizens’ safety and protecting personal data, as well as presenting a multitude of challenges for police leaders, policy makers, and those who hold the police to account. Cressida Dick was appointed UK Commissioner of Police in 2017, the first female commissioner in the history of the Metropolitan Police. She leads the United Kingdom’s largest police service, having served as a police officer for most of her 35-year career.
