Durham City Council was slated to vote on a contentious, half-million dollar contract that would use AI to aggregate police data for a “Real Time Crime Center” at their Monday meeting — until the city manager proposed pulling the item from the council’s agenda just hours before the meeting began.
The $517,000 contract faced strong opposition from members of the Durham community skeptical of mass surveillance, privacy and AI usage. The council voted unanimously to scrap its vote on the contract at the outset of their city council meeting, following a recommendation from City Manager Bo Ferguson.
The proposed Real Time Crime Center aimed to “improve public safety and enhance emergency response” by centralizing currently disparate police data. In doing so, it would “improve situational awareness, improve and accelerate response, streamline investigations and resolve cases more quickly,” the city’s memo on the matter read. Durham would be one of roughly 225 cities to establish a center of this type, many of which are through Peregrine Technologies…