- Thanks to a deal between Auxiliary Force and Chinese AI company YITU, certain Polis Bantuan in Malaysia will receive AI-enabled bodycams.
- These bodycams will be able to identify wanted parties by the police.
- These cameras are also able to provide infrared for recordings in dark places, a more compact design, and the ability to potentially livestream bodycams.
When it comes to circumstances like car accidents, sometimes it boils down to a “he said she said” situation if none of the vehicles involved used dashcams.
And accidents are one thing, but when it comes to the people who are responsible for our security—like guards of policemen—bodycams seem like an obvious choice. After all, we want to know that they’re actually doing their job right.
While the complete change in our national security bodies will take some time, a group of Polis Bantuan (Auxiliary Police) here have attempted to set a benchmark.
Not only do members of their force wear bodycams, they’ve also recently installed Artificial Intelligence-powered bodycams onto their forces.
In February earlier this year, the Auxiliary Force Sdn Bhd—a member of the Royal Malaysia Police Cooperative Bhd, working with Yitu Technology—are the first security force in Malaysia to integrate cutting-edge bodycams equipped with facial recognition.
The facial recognition technology will allow officers to review the video footage to identify any persons of interest post-event.
The Auxiliary Force will be pulling the data of wanted individuals from the police, and the system will prompt them on any person or suspect wanted by the police. According a representative of Auxiliary Force, they will then notify the relevant parties or assist in the arrest process.
They were also pulled by the additional features, such as the infrared for night recordings, clearer videos, a more compact design, better system integration capabilites, and most interestingly, the potential to livestream bodycams.
“You know that people can query a lot of things from written reports, but video and audio, no one can question you. It will be taken as a concrete evidence for whatever happens.”
“We are benchmarking CISCO in Singapore,” said Auxiliary Force, who also informed us that the move was also inspired by the going-ons in USA, though their approach is quite different.
Yitu Technology is a well-known entity in China: a cloud-based visual recognition engine that allows computers to recognise faces and cars. And it already has precedent by being first applied to help authorities identify persons of interest in criminal investigations, and to track traffic violations.
In fact, the Auxiliary Force has relayed the message of having bodycams to the regular police in Bukit Aman, and they too are eyeing these tools. However, the regular police will have to wait for governmental approval and funds if they’d like to tackle the artificial intelligence bodycams.
“It’s good for me actually as management. When we want to take stern action against our staff, we don’t need to because automatically, they will behave,” joked the representative of Auxiliary Force about their deployment of bodycams.
Auxiliary Force Sdn Bhd hopes that they can set a benchmark for other auxiliary police organisations in Malaysia as well.
- You can find Polis Bantuan with these artificial intelligence bodycams in areas like Oasis Damansara, mosques like Masjid Negeri Shah Alam, Masjid Tengku Ampuan Jemaah, a French school in Dutamas, Aspac Lubricants in Port Klang, and the MIC headquarters in KL.
Feature Image Credit: Polis Bantuan Malaysia
