AI Tool Aims to Speed Up Crime Solving in San Diego

A man who lost his home to a robbery found that the police only saw a 13% chance of getting his stuff back. He felt the system was slow and decided to create a software that could help detectives work faster. The program, called Longeye, started in San Francisco last year and is now talking to police departments across the country, including some in San Diego. The main problem for police is that there are too many cases and not enough investigators. In San Diego, a large number of serious crimes remain unsolved: 83% of sexual assaults, 33% of kidnappings and 15% of murders. Detectives cannot sift through all the digital evidence on their own. Longeye can read a huge amount of data – phone records, emails, GPS tracks and more – and turn it into an easy‑to‑search case file. This lets officers find the most important clues quickly instead of spending weeks sorting through files. Other police agencies have already used Longeye. In one county, the software listened to 537 jail phone calls and found a single conversation that contained a homicide confession. In another case, it matched three phones that appeared in two different robbery locations and helped build a solid case. The software does not try to predict crimes, but it points detectives toward useful evidence and creates a summary of the case.The company is not alone. Big tech firms like Palantir also provide data‑analysis tools for law enforcement, but Longeye focuses on helping investigators find evidence faster rather than predicting targets. A former police chief praised the tool for keeping detectives’ judgment in front of them while speeding up their work. However, experts warn that giving the police so much data could be risky. A professor of law said that with AI, it becomes easier to create false incriminating evidence if the system misinterprets something. In one incident, a phone call about a biblical passage was mistakenly flagged as a confession. The creators say they have built in checks so investigators can verify the AI’s findings before acting on them. The software is still being tested in a few San Diego departments. The El Cajon Police Department has used it on one case but is still deciding whether to adopt it fully. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office also tried the tool, but money and priorities have slowed down a permanent rollout. Small agencies can pay as little as $5, 000 a year for the service. The founder of Longeye is traveling across the country to show his software to district attorneys and detectives. The company has raised $5 million so far, mainly from a venture fund owned by well‑known tech investors, and plans to raise more money soon.