MIT startup helps police connect crimes across jurisdictions with AI

Multitude Insights, a three-year-old Somerville startup founded by MIT graduates, has developed AI-powered software to help police departments modernize crime bulletins and identify patterns across jurisdictions. The platform has been piloted by Boston, Brookline, and Watertown police departments among dozens of agencies across 10 states, representing a significant shift from traditional paper-based and faxed crime reporting systems.

What you should know: The software replaces antiquated paper bulletins with digital templates and uses AI to connect crimes across multiple jurisdictions.

• Police officers can create digital crime bulletins using template forms instead of printed papers, PDFs, or faxed copies.
• AI analyzes multiple reports across cities, regions, or states to identify patterns like similar vehicles or breaking-and-entering techniques.
• Each department controls whether and how far their bulletins are included in AI searches.
• The system helped connect domestic terrorist incidents involving destroyed weather radars across two states and linked credit card scam thefts in California through a baseball cap the perpetrator wore.

How it works: Officers use drop-down menus to select crime categories, fill in details, and upload photos or videos, with other officers able to leave comments or tips at the bottom of reports.

• The AI displays relevant bulletins to users based on their cases, such as showing a robbery detective similar prior break-ins.
• The platform creates a searchable database from what CEO Matt White describes as “an ad hoc process around the country.”

The big picture: Law enforcement agencies struggle with information silos and outdated communication methods that lead to missed connections between related crimes.

• “If you’re inside of a big [law enforcement] agency like a Boston or a Seattle, the left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” White explained.
• Current paper and email bulletin systems create information overload and ignored reports, according to former New Haven police chief Dean Esserman.

Key limitations: The startup deliberately avoids facial recognition technology due to policy uncertainties and bias concerns.

• “It’s really hard to deploy nationally anything having to do with facial recognition, so until the policy is a little bit more clear, that’s been a business decision to stay out of that,” White said.
• AI facial recognition has been found biased in studies and is prohibited for police use in some areas.

Who’s behind it: White, a former Navy intelligence officer, co-founded the company with Akihiko Izu, a Japanese lawyer he met at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

• The team has raised more than $5 million from investors including New York-based Commonweal Ventures.
• White’s Navy experience analyzing intelligence and a ride-along with Boston police during graduate school inspired the concept.

What they’re saying: Former police chief Dean Esserman, now a Multitude advisor, emphasized the practical benefits for overwhelmed officers.

• “It would be great if you had the time and no pressure to keep plodding along, trying to link other cases, other hints, other pieces of evidence or leads,” Esserman said. “This software can help that happen.”