Eye on AI: How the Racine County Sheriff's Office is using AI to catch criminals

 

RACINE, Wis. (CBS 58) -- With criminals becoming more tech savvy, the Racine County Sheriff's Office is one of many advancing their tools and using AI to stay ahead on their investigations.

"We are on a roll, and we are putting some really bad guys away, which is amazing," said Anthony LaCombe, an investigator with the Racine County Sheriff's Office.

The Racine County Sheriff Office's Internet Crimes Against Children unit has made more than a dozen arrests this year alone.

They say new artificial intelligence programs are becoming an asset to their team.

"Specifically, for an ICAC case, I'm going to be looking for any child pornography images or videos," said Maddie Churches, a forensic analyst with the Racine County Sheriff's Office. "So in those programs, it will sift out the family vacation pictures or nature pictures so that I'm no longer spending hours or days looking through hundreds of thousands of images."

Potentially cutting the investigation by days, allowing them to focus on the illegal images and catch suspects quicker.

"If we need to narrow down for a suspect, you know based off of descriptors, the AI will actually comb through that video and actually be able to provide us with images of a person within that video that fit these physical descriptors that were requested," said Emil Ortiz, an investigator with the Racine County Sheriff's Office.

The department also has systems running 24/7, using AI to scan millions of images on the internet daily. Alerting investigators of any concerning images.

"If it's Christmas Eve, we're off duty," said LaCombe. "We really aren’t off duty, our computers are still looking constantly for known child pornography images that are going across the internet and through the United States and across the state of Wisconsin."

However in the wrong hands, AI can create additional challenges for investigators.

"Now with AI generators you can basically generate those types of images," said Ortiz. "You can generate images of adult females, child females, child boys, you know anything you really want with artificial intelligence."

Images which are illegal in Wisconsin.

Another hurdle is finding hidden electronics. That’s where K-9 Stella comes in. She can sniff out the chemicals in the devices, alerting her handler and bringing new evidence to the table.

"She finds the electronics, AI goes through it, makes it narrower for us," said LaCombe. "Saves us time to what images we should truly put our time into to make sure it's illegal or not illegal and hopefully make an arrest."

Coming together as a team to stay vigilant against crime.