THE POLICE DATA CHALLENGE Copyright Policing Insight/Cognyte 2023 expand the approach to a national level, linking all 43 police forces – something of a holy grail in data analytics – is not being overlooked. TOEX Strategic Lead, Detective Chief Supt Kate Thacker, is not ignorant to those opportunities, but is keener to emphasise the collaboration that has brought the project to the stage it is now, and underline the importance of forces working together and sharing data. “The benefit we’ve had is saying, look, here is a vessel for us to demonstrate multi-force data modelling. So stop trying to do this on your own – and frankly, you’re doing it with one of your eyes shut if you do it with just your own data,” said Det Ch Supt Thacker. A sense of direction That collaboration message was echoed by Chief Constable Lisa Winward, the NPCC National Intelligence Portfolio Lead, who told Policing Insight: “It’s the ambition of all the strategic leads to work collectively, and where we see intelligence has got an absolutely critical role to play, data technology has to be at the forefront really for us to reduce harm and keep communities safe.” An advocate of increased use of AI and ML in collating, extracting and analysing data, CC Winward recognises how far policing has come in a short space of time, from the days of “collator cards” and a collator “sitting in a little office surrounded by filing cabinets”. But that doesn’t mean the human input will be a thing of the past: “I truly believe in policing we will always have to have human intervention. There’ll always have to be somebody with professional knowledge who can make sense of the things that the automated process spits out the other end of the sausage machine.” Collaboration on tackling the data challenge also extends outside of police forces to the service’s work with partner agencies, something that Thames Valley Supt Lewis Prescott-Mayling is well aware of, having played a lead role in establishing the Thames Valley Together multi-agency platform as part of his work with the force’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). He has the same sense of optimism around policing’s improving ability to analyse data and extract relevant information, as well as the opportunities and obligations for multi-agency data sharing – particularly around prevention. “I think we’ll move quite quickly in the next two to three years,” he told Policing Insight. “The main blockages to us not doing it are around political will, right from our senior leaders to government, to make sure that the law is implemented as it’s written, and particularly around the data sharing side. “The benefit we’ve had is saying, look, here is a vessel for us to demonstrate multi-force data modelling. So stop trying to do this on your own – and frankly, you’re doing it with one of your eyes shut if you do it with just your own data.” DCS Kate Thacker TOEX Detective Chief Superintendent Kate Thacker