The Plan to Make American Crime Obsolete
This A16Z podcast transcript features Colonel Jeffrey Glover and Rahul Siddhu discussing how emerging technologies like drones, license plate readers, body camera analytics, and AI are transforming American law enforcement. They explore both the operational benefits and the cultural challenges of getting conservative police institutions to adopt new tools. The conversation also addresses officer mental health and advice for founders looking to build public safety technology.
Summary
The podcast, hosted by David Yulevich for A16Z, brings together Colonel Jeffrey Glover of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and Rahul Siddhu, a former police officer and paramedic turned public safety technologist, to discuss the modernization of American law enforcement through technology.
A central theme is the deployment of drone technology in public safety. Siddhu, affiliated with Flock Safety, describes a near-future where drones automatically respond to 911 calls, pursue Amber Alert vehicles, and track shooting suspects in real time — tasks currently impossible without fleets of helicopters running 24/7. A concrete example is given of a drone de-escalating a 911 call about a supposed gunman, who turned out to be a janitor with a broom, illustrating how situational awareness technology can prevent unnecessary use of force.
Colonel Glover details the broader technology ecosystem deployed within his agency, including Vitania/Heal the Heroes brain-scanning tools to assess officer readiness at the start of shifts, and Trulio body-camera analytics that score officer-public interactions, flag combative encounters, and detect signs of burnout. The department has instituted well-checks and sabbaticals at 15 and 25-year career marks based on these insights, aiming to improve both officer performance and job satisfaction.
On the intelligence side, Glover describes Arizona's Arizona Counterterrorism Center (ACTIC), which participates in national fusion center information sharing. He also highlights efforts to build international intelligence partnerships with countries including Mexico, the UAE, and Liberia, driven by Arizona's status as a border state and the recognition that crime is increasingly globalized. Upcoming events like FIFA and the Olympics are cited as catalysts for these intelligence programs.
For founders interested in entering the public safety space, Siddhu offers nuanced advice: law enforcement is culturally resistant to change but simultaneously struggling with understaffing and complexity, creating real demand for the right solutions. He advises spending significant time with officers — through ride-alongs or even becoming a reserve officer — to truly understand their needs. Glover echoes this, noting that the future officer skill set will be more investigative and analytical, less focused on physical enforcement, requiring both technological adaptation and leadership flexibility.
About this episode
David Ulevitch speaks with Col. Jeffrey Glover and Rahul Sidhu about how AI, drones, and sensor networks are reshaping public safety and what it takes to bring new technology into law enforcement at scale. As departments face staffing shortages, burnout, and rising complexity, they examine how the right tools can make officers more effective, safer, and better supported. The conversation covers how drone-as-first-responder programs are changing the speed and safety of emergency response, from high-risk warrant service to Amber Alert pursuits. Glover describes how Arizona DPS is building a full technology ecosystem around its officers, including body-worn camera analytics for burnout detection, brain scan wellness checks, and international intelligence-sharing partnerships ahead of FIFA and the Olympics. Sidhu explains how Flock Safety's layered sensor network — license plate readers, gunshot detection, and drone dispatch — is turning reactive policing into proactive, data-driven response. They also discuss what founders get wrong when building for law enforcement, why spending time on the beat matters more than any product spec, and how the next decade will fundamentally change the skills required to be a police officer in America.
Key Insights
- Siddhu argues that autonomous drone networks make persistent aerial surveillance economically viable in a way that helicopter fleets never were, making real-time vehicle pursuit and gunshot response an inevitable part of policing infrastructure.
- Colonel Glover claims that body-worn camera analytics (via Trulio) are being used not just for accountability but as a mental health tool, flagging officer burnout and triggering institutional interventions like sabbaticals at 15 and 25-year career marks.
- Siddhu observes that law enforcement culture is caught in a paradox — resistant to both change and stagnation simultaneously — but argues that founders should focus on technologies that feel inevitable rather than trying to overcome resistance directly.
- Glover argues that the future police officer will require a fundamentally different skill set, shifting away from physical enforcement toward technical and investigative capabilities, including AI analysis and fraud detection, within the next decade.
- Glover contends that Arizona is pursuing an international intelligence presence — including officers from Mexico, UAE, and Liberia — based on the premise that globalized crime trends can be intercepted before they manifest locally if information sharing is established proactively.
Topics
Transcript
There's two things cops hate, for things to change and for things to stay the same. Most of the cops in the field are going to have to change the way their skill set is shaped. Because it's going to be a little bit more investigative, it's going to be a little bit more nuanced. It's not going to look the same anymore. Are people just going to start seeing drones flying around? Is that where we are? You hear a gunshot go off and the drone finds a shooter getting into a car and driving off, and then pursuing the vehicle. It's kind of almost hard to see that it isn't inevitable. We can't do that with a helicopter…
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