The Fairfax County Police Department said its officers are employing technology that utilizes artificial intelligence to better serve Virginia’s most populated county.
WTOP was invited inside the department’s Real Time Crime Center to learn about these new technologies, notably their response drones and body cameras that double as AI tools.
Axon body cameras
“Body cameras today in 2026 are no longer just tools for recording footage. They’re not just tools for transparency and accountability in law enforcement,” said Fairfax County Sgt. Evan Brandolino, who oversees the body camera program and digital evidence management system.
Officers in four of Fairfax County’s eight districts, are now issued an Axon Body 4 camera and with it comes numerous features, including a real-time translation application that can help officers communicate in 57 different languages. About 35% of households in the county have a primary language other than English and over 180 languages are spoken throughout the county, according to census data.
“This camera is filling a critical gap when officers are first on scene of an emergency and they’re trying to get, you know, a suspect description, direction of travel, those key pieces of information, and they don’t have time to wait for an interpreter to show up or to take out their phone and dial language line and wait to be connected,” Brandolino said.
Brandolino demonstrated how the camera is used. He pushed a button on the camera and it responded, “Say translate to X for auto detect. Then release button.”
In the scenario with another officer, he proceeded to have a conversation in Urdu about a missing child, gathering details about when he was last seen and what clothes he was wearing. He proceeded to demonstrate the same capabilities in Spanish.
“We’ve seen officers use it in probably close to 20 languages at this point. About 80% of the time, it’s been Spanish, and that’s just due to the makeup of our population and the districts where we’ve been testing it,” Brandolino said. “But we’ve seen Italian, Korean, Russian, Chinese, all sorts of languages be translated in the field.”
Another new feature of the Axon camera is Draft One, an AI-assisted police report writing system. Draft One takes the footage from the officer worn body camera and generates a rough draft of a police report.
“It’s sort of an answer to the question of how do we minimize the amount of time that officers are stuck behind a keyboard or at a desk writing police reports and maximize the amount of time that they are in the field responding to calls for service,” Brandolino said.
Brandolino said officers still must edit the draft composed by AI to ensure it’s accurate.
“What might have been hours of report writing, and it condenses it into 15 minutes, 30 minutes. We’ve seen incredible time savings for our officers,” Brandolino said.
Draft One is allowed to be used for all crimes except homicides, sex offenses and critical incidents such as police shootings.
Drone as first responder
The Fairfax County Police Department said it’s leading the capital region in its use of drone technology. The Drone as First Responder program, or DFR, launched within the county earlier this year. The department currently operates 13 drone launch sites with a planned expansion to 18 sites across the county.
These drones have a 2-mile radius of operation and can arrive to the scene of a reported crime in an average of around two minutes.
“It’s changing policing in a number of ways. The biggest one is that we’re able to get intel to our officers and firefighters on the ground, most of the time before they actually get there. So, we’re able to provide that critical data,” said Second Lt. Brad Woehrlen, who runs the standards and training for the Drone as First Responder and drone team programs.
Woehrlen said the drones came in handy during the July Fourth weekend, when they were called to a number of house fires. They were able to get on the scene for a number of them before fire crews arrived and provide crucial data that helped decide what resources they needed for each particular incident, according to Woehrlen.
Police said they’ve also had incidents during which cars had run off the road and the drone was able to spot the vehicle before police and fire crews arrived. It has been useful for finding missing people.
“Several months ago, a caller called in what they believed was somebody with a bow and arrow in the median on a major roadway,” Woehrlen said. “Obviously, this is going to generate a massive response.”
He said the response to that call would have been expansive and could have involved shutting down the entire road. But the drone was able to get overhead and notice that it was not a bow and arrow; instead, it was somebody with a stick.
“It was a perfect de-escalating tool. So, in situations like that, getting that data there before the officers got there proved invaluable,” Woehrlen said.
Fairfax County’s Drone as First Responder program just surpassed 1,500 missions this year and 70% of the time they are first on scene to an emergency, according to data from the department.
With police eyes in the sky, many may have concerns about privacy; Woehrlen said they take these concerns seriously when going through their extensive drone operator training.
The drone can be sent directly to locations mentioned on 911 calls and while en route cameras are continuously forward facing until they get to the incident.
“We train very hard to make sure that we have the best remote operators on the department,” Woehrlen said. “We put them through a rigorous training program to make sure that they’re able to respond as best they can to help our community.”
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