As law enforcement agencies across the D.C. region grapple with staffing challenges, there may be help on the way in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Applicants to the Fairfax County Police Department increased 10% in 2024, according to police data, and the agency suspects its emphasis on emerging technology could be behind the boost.
“We’re early adopting a lot of innovative technology, which I think contributes to the draw of why people choose Fairfax County,” said Deputy Chief Wilson Lee.
The Criminal Justice Academy in Chantilly, Virginia, was the first in the state to use artificial intelligence, Lee said.
The academy partners with a company that develops AI technology, and recruits are given assignments that include crafting interview questions and building a rapport with someone. The technology grades the work, Lee said, and after the assignment, recruits get a score assessing their overall performance.
“From some of our surveys back from our recruits that we’ve given these assignments out to, it helped them tremendously in terms of developing their questions, how to talk to someone, when they actually have to be put to the test,” Lee said.
The AI tool allows recruits to log that practice “at their own convenience, at their home, make them a little bit more comfortable in terms of talking to people,” Lee said.
In a padded room at the academy, meanwhile, recruits use virtual reality technology to help with scenario-based training “without a very large logistical demand on the academy,” Lee said.
The VR scenarios include different types of calls for service and, typically, recruits are presented with a suspicious person scenario and have to talk to the VR to determine if there’s a crime that occurred. A computer controlled by the instructors will dictate the action, and the recruit will respond to whatever the computer is doing, Lee said.
“We are the first one to do it in a massive scale, and our wide adoption of this technology and making it more repetition based and normalizing it, that’s what makes us stand out,” Lee said.
The agency also places an emphasis on officer wellness programs, he said, and the academy is one of the few to have an in-house athletic trainer. Recruits and incumbent officers are able to visit to go through “anything physical therapy, anything she can do to prevent injuries.”
Lee said the boost in applications last year would mean “more officers out on the street and help with the calls for service, and make our community safer.”
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