Cape CopCast
Welcome to "The Cape CopCast," the official podcast of the Cape Coral Police Department.
Hosted by Officer Mercedes Simonds, and Lisa Greenberg from our Public Affairs team, this podcast dives into the heart of Cape Coral PD's public safety, community initiatives, and the inner workings of our police department. Each episode brings you insightful discussions, interviews with key community figures, and expert advice on safety.
Cape CopCast
Chief's Chat #26: Why Embracing AI Gives Communities Faster, Safer Policing
What if the camera on an officer’s chest could listen, watch, and turn a call or scene scene into a clean first draft of the report before anyone sits down at a keyboard? We dig into the real-world ways AI is changing police work in Cape Coral—speeding up documentation, meeting urgent NCIC deadlines for missing kids, and giving officers more time where it matters most: with people.
We walk through how body-worn cameras now pair with AI to identify call types, pull key details from audio and video, and create structured reports that officers review and approve. That shift doesn’t replace human judgment—it protects it, freeing officers from retyping interviews and letting them stay in the field longer. We also unpack a powerful translation feature that detects language on the fly and delivers near real-time two-way communication, cutting delays and misunderstandings when clarity is critical.
We talk transparently about total how strategic tech investment can reduce the need for future positions without cutting current jobs, recapturing workload while guarding against burnout. The takeaway is simple: you won’t be replaced by AI, but you could be outpaced by leaders who use it well. We’re choosing to move forward—measuring results, keeping human skills at the core, and using the right tools to serve Cape Coral better every day.
The Cape Coral Police Department is hiring. To apply: www.capecops.com/careers
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa Greenberg.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the public affairs office, and we have Chief Size More again today.
SPEAKER_00:Well, good morning, ladies. It's good to be back.
SPEAKER_02:And I think we wanted to talk a little bit about new technology, AI things that we have coming down the pipeline. We have a lot of things going on, especially in society. You look at a lot of different things and how everything has changed, even down to probably how college kids write papers. Oh, geez. That's for sure. What other AI tools are we looking into?
SPEAKER_00:Police uh departments have been using technology since it be anything that becomes available, we try to leverage. Right. Right? We're just like any other industry. And when you look at what we are trying to do, we're talking about AI, right? And and the latest, greatest technology. We've been using computers in the cars for decades now. That was kind of the first type of technology like that. Uh, we adopted a body camera program in 2016. We were one of the first in the area, certainly in the area, but uh one of on the forefront in in the country for that to voluntarily dive into that uh bit of technology. And now with artificial intelligence, there are a lot of applications for policing. And like any tool, you don't get the tool just because it's cool, right? Or because it's neat or new. You get it to help you improve on what you're doing. So you don't go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a circular saw because it's cool. You do it because it makes you much more efficient than using a handsaw. Right. Right? This is no different than that. So if you can, for example, um, a body worn camera can it always has done this, but now there's new AI integrated technology where you show up on a call for service, it sees what you see, and so you got visual, it picks up audio on what's going on, and it is able to, just like if you use Chat GPT at home or or for other um college papers or anything, it's very intuitive, and it will take the video that it sees, the camera, the audio that it hears, and will actually tell you it looks like you're trying to write a past occurred burglary report. And it will take all of the data that it has gotten, all of the senses that it has has um heard and seen, and will craft a police report, and they're pretty darn good. So crazy. So, what does that mean? Is that just because it's cool? Is that the circular saw to have one part, or is it just better, much more efficient than a handsaw? And it's for efficiency. How does that help you, uh, the public? If an officer comes to your home and you're the victim of a crime, or you need some kind of beyond a verbal interaction, it becomes a police report. So you had a uh vandalism at your house, or um a missing or runaway juvenile, or anything where there it used to be called pen to paper. If the AI technology can do the report based on look, listen, and feel, and it's appropriate and it's reviewed and submitted, the time saved from the officer doing that puts that officer back in the game. And the recapture of work time is what we measure. And that is the direct benefit to the community is you get the officers to arrive, put their carbon-based human talents that can't be replicated by AI to work. And then when it comes time to do something that is um productive for that case, but it becomes a diminished amount of productivity to get back out there for availability. Your best ability is availability, right? So the longer you are unavailable, the less benefit you have to the next customer or the next citizen or the next interaction or prevented crime, et cetera. So that's how it benefits people, is the officers go, they deliver the talent and the training that we provide them, and then they're able to quickly and professionally document the incident in an in a police report, file it, and get back out there. And that that's the game changer.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's really interesting because I was wanting to make the point, and you kind of touched on it. This isn't to replace people. You hear oftentimes with the advent of new technology, oh, it's taking jobs from away from people. This isn't that. This is the only conversations that we've had related to these types of technology is how can it make the officers' jobs more efficient? How can it help them do a better job? How can it help the people of Cape Coral get better service? It's never been, oh, if we do this, we can cut these positions and save money. It's never about that. It's always about just improving the efficiency, the experience for someone who's calling the police department and needs help in some kind of way.
SPEAKER_00:Correct. If you and we, this is a theme on the podcast. We talk about uh response time to priority one calls. Now, if we're tied up on a call and we have to clear it for a priority one, we do that. But it's a lot slower than if you were already out there swimming in the fish tank, right? So to get people back out, the same amount of people, there's two ways you can do this. You can take somebody and you can get efficiency out of that human resource, that person. You can physically push them and you can have them hurry up, you can cut corners, right? And that's what's going to happen. So if you manually push people to increase their efficiency, that you'll you'll eliminate some inefficiencies that are built in if somebody is is just not performing. But uh going on the assumption that people are performing optimally and then to get more out of it, right, you have to create that energy from somewhere, and that is from cutting corners or not as good of a report or a hastened investigation. We don't want to do that. We want to take all of the people-based things that you talked about and get the most out of them. The interaction, the human compassion part, the um discerning of everything that happened, providing people with advice or or what we do, that doesn't get changed. What gets changed is the things that you really you pay for, you pay for us to do reports and and do them the right way, but you're not getting an immediate uh ROI or return on investment or getting them back out onto patrol. But by using or leveraging technology, you can get the increased output on that human resource, that that officer, that person, without sacrificing the quality control. So it's a way to get a more 360 efficiency out of somebody without hammering them and and going counter to wellness initiatives and burnout and and uh a less than product. That makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely. And if you look at certain examples, like with when we have missing people, um, specifically like missing endangered children, time is of the essence. And I think that's one of those situations where uh we have to get the report into NCIC with everything documented within two hours and having something where time is of the essence to just say, the mom told me all of this, it's all recorded on body worn camera. It's gonna be incredibly detailed. It doesn't take out the review process. The officer's still gonna review it, but they don't have to sit there and reflect back on everything and say, oh, like what color pants did the mom say that they were wearing? It does it it'll do that for you. You just have to go back and review it and it'll happen a lot faster.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I mean, there are there are opportunities for a glitch. So there is a a policy built in where you have to review it. You don't just hit the button and then go. It could have completely crosswired somewhere. So you have to read it. But in your what what you're referring to with NCIC and what that means, you have, I believe it's a two-hour time limit. Yes. When if if your child was a runaway, we come and take the report or a missing person. You know, they're very similar but but different. But you have two hours to get that into NCIC, which is a deep dive here, is the National Crime Information Center, and FCIC is the Florida Crime Information Center. It is uh, for lack of a better word, it's an internet for law enforcement, it's an intranet network where they all connect. So that way, if your runaway is with somebody they met online and then they get up to Charlotte County and they're at a convenience store and the police get called because it looks suspicious, and they run them. Some running, they run their name in the system. The system is N C I C F C I C and it will hit that that's a missing person, that's a runaway, and then you can reunite them with the family. Well, the two-hour time limit, a lot can happen in two hours when somebody's missing like that. So it's the time to get them entered so that you don't have them slip through the cracks, and um, it's time because it's a law that you have to have it in within two hours. So you could be working on a missing person or runaway, and then you get called to clear for a priority call. I'm sorry, I can't clear to come help with a gunshot case or some other big priority because I'm doing paperwork. You're gonna put that paperwork on the side and go, and then we'll fast forward and you're gonna have to explain to our auditors why FCIC and CIC was not updated within two hours for that missing person. So there's a compliance issue, and then there's a real world application of a missed opportunity. And these are real lives that you're dealing with with missed opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely on both ends. So, what other technology do we have that we're bringing into the game?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, the same system, right? The body worn camera. There uh it's on the forefront here or pretty close with a translate feature where it will listen to a conversation, detect the language, and broadcast in a real-time translation. So if you're speaking to somebody who's a Spanish speaker and we don't have Officer Rodriguez or Officer Prieto here like we did on the the last podcast, and and you you need to communicate, it will detect Spanish, translate what they're saying, and you will hear it in a very, very almost real time. There's a delay for it to process it and give it to you. You respond in your native language, English would be mine, and it would translate to whatever language is being detected in a conversation and broadcast that out. It's not so awesome. It's it's really something else.
SPEAKER_02:That's really cool.
SPEAKER_00:So that's something that's on the forefront that we're looking at. So I don't think we have to explain how that would make things efficient.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, I need somebody to come and translate for me, or you got the phone held up, and you're it's it's just a way to cut wood better.
SPEAKER_02:Now, is that an upgrade in the system that we already use? Um is it like an is it an axon upgrade?
SPEAKER_00:It's an axon product, okay, uh, which is axon is the company that does our body and war cameras, our tasers, but it also does a our internal work throughput on evidence and communicating with the state attorney and records management. There's a lot involved in axon, and they have a pretty uh pretty dynamite business model, so they're not going to give it to us. So it's an investment for us. So you mentioned earlier about it AI doesn't replace people. It's that's a nuanced conversation, right? So I'll it'll be quick, but it AI will not send you two home because we have AI public affairs. What AI could do is as we grow and scale up, if we needed to onboard a third public affairs person, that technology could eliminate that need for a third, or it could delay that need for a third, or we get a third and won't need a fourth. Right? So when you're looking at long-term planning, like our project 35, we're looking to onboard about 25 officers per year for the next 10 years. It's a good ballpark math. That's 250 people that we need to bring in. If these advents that we bring on, these new technologies can recapture workload or work output from the staff that we have, we still are going to grow. We are still going to need people. But if we can scientifically show what kind of um efficiencies we can gain or workload recapture we can get, that 250 in 10 years might be 180. Just a ballpark. I that we haven't done that. Right. Those are the kinds of studies that we're doing. Because when you look at one, three, five 10-year planning, it's very expensive to onboard people. People have salary, benefits, days off, vacation, um, pension contributions, insurance match, and there's a lot of things that go into a person. So you do that total compensation or package times how many you get per year, labor contracts, escalating cost of labor. So there's a lot of layers on that map. But the end of the map has a price that's pretty significant when you're going to onboard all those people. That's a given. We need to grow. So the so the the non-negotiable in our little word problem here is that we need to onboard this much work product. How we get that work product is what we work with. Does that output come from all of the people that we need, just regular human beings, carbon-based, or can you augment it with artificial intelligence and technology? You're still going to need to get more people. It's not so much the people, it's the output. So if the output can come from another source, it could limit or reduce the amount of people that you need. So there's a cost up front. These are not cheap technologies. But when you look at a what looks like a sticker shock of, oh my gosh, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that, if you start adding salary benefits, escalating costs of labor for a significant infusion of people in your workforce, 250 people, that's a massive number. If you can reduce that, that delta and what you reduced should be equal to or less than the initial investment. Right. So big dollars today really can um amortize amortization rate, right? It tumbles, could be worth so much more. So spending money now could be worth a huge savings later because the end result with all of this processing going on is the output. And that's what you care about is the output of work. Is the quality the same? Do I still feel safe? Do I get an officer when I need an officer? Is my experience living in the city the same or better? That's the output. If we can get that output with different means that are a combination of people and technology at the best bang for your buck, that is what we do, and that's what you pay me to do. And I have a very, very smart staff who does a lot of this stuff for me in conjunction. So I'm an idea man, they're a get-a-done uh group of men and women, and that's the goal, right? So it I guess a takeaway would be yes, technology's coming. It does not replace people, it could reduce the need for additional people. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I would hope that people would take some comfort in that we're not just floating day-to-day, day to day. We are looking ahead and intentionally staying ahead of the curve and trying to be the best. And that's what that looks like.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely awesome. I think it's incredible, and I think it's a good use of the technology that's available to us for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely.
SPEAKER_01:Anything else, Chief?
SPEAKER_02:That's a lot.
SPEAKER_01:It is a lot. It's interesting though, and I think that it it's good for the people to know that this is what we're working towards for sure.
SPEAKER_00:I'll leave you with this. I went to a uh the Florida police chiefs conference and they talked about AI. This is about two years ago, within the last two years. And it was the conversation about replacing people. And the the quote that really stuck with me is you as chiefs, and they were talking to all of the chiefs in Florida that were in this this conference, you will not be replaced by AI. But you will be replaced by a chief who embraces AI.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that really stuck with me. So doing nothing is not an option. Pretending it won't happen is not an option. Or longing for days gone by, it's nice to do, but it does not solve problems and it will get you escorted out of the profession in a hurry.
SPEAKER_01:So that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:That's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Moving forward always, keeping it moving. Love it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think we're the society is growing and we're happily growing with it. I think it's better to roll with it than to fight what's happening and continue delivering a really good level of service. And I think we've proven that with a lot of the numbers that we've pulled out lately, especially when it comes to response time. So agreed. It's only going to get better from here. Thank you for watching. Yes, thanks for joining us, and we will catch you next time. Have a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Stay safe. Have a great weekend.
