HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Maui police have won approval for a $1.7 million expansion of high-tech policing tools that will include cameras and drones assisted by artificial intelligence, but the plan is raising concerns among civil rights advocates.

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Maui Police Chief John Pelletier envisions cameras giving complete real-time coverage of Maui island, tied into private security systems and supported by multiple drones, using artificial intelligence to spot trouble.

“Our personnel can go back and they can look for past events, where there’s a crime, they could be looking for things in real time so they can actually see things as they’re occurring,” Pelletier said.

Response to Lahaina wildfire

The communication chaos that hampered response to the Lahaina wildfire has given Pelletier a stronger argument for deploying new technology. He said it would help in public emergencies as well as fighting crime, with all the information coming into a central real-time operations center.

“That’s gonna have AI technology built in there that will search for anomalies. So smoke, coming from the mountain, will be an anomaly. There’s different anomalies that will look for,” Pelletier said.

Drones provided by a company called Brinc would be part of the system. The company’s marketing video shows the capability to respond minutes after a call and identify a license from a thousand feet, which could then be tracked on Maui’s traffic cameras, all watched from the operations center.

“Imagine you have a police chase, or you have something that’s occurring. You can actually have the ability to monitor that in real time over the entire community,” Pelletier said.

Council approves funds

The council agreed to the $1.7 million cost after one member asked about drug dealing at a local park.

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“What’s great about that is we can actually put the cameras in there we can see this occur in real time is a phenomenal assist for the officers,” Pelletier said.

Council member Tom Cook said the system would help tremendously and that people are asking for security and oversight for their children.

“We can utilize these things at high crime areas, such as the airports, different things like that, and so for the money that it costs, we will save money. We will save lives,” Pelletier said.

Civil rights concerns

“I think there are several serious civil rights concerns with this new program,” said Wookie Kim of the ACLU Hawaii.

The ACLU said widespread surveillance, especially tied into private businesses or homes, risks privacy and potential abuse. The addition of AI using data algorithms to identify criminal behavior is another issue.

“These algorithms, right, it all depends on the data that they’re fed to be trained on. A lot of that data is flawed, garbage in, garbage out,” Kim said.

Pelletier said the system would only be used for public safety and law enforcement and would operate under rules to protect civil rights. The ACLU said the public needs to know more about what those guardrails are.

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