The Police-Industrial Complex Is a Choice

Technology will not determine the future of policing. Leadership and trust will.

The future of policing will not be decided by artificial intelligence. It will not be decided by surveillance cameras, drones, robots, or predictive analytics. It will be decided by something much older than technology: leadership.

That may sound like a surprising statement given the pace of technological change. Every month seems to bring another breakthrough, another vendor promising to revolutionize policing, and another announcement about artificial intelligence or real-time crime centers. Police executives are surrounded by opportunities to purchase systems that promise to make agencies faster, smarter, and more efficient. Yet the most important question is not whether these technologies work. The question is whether policing will govern them wisely.

That distinction matters because many of today's debates are being framed incorrectly. Consider the controversy surrounding automated license plate readers. Public meetings often become arguments about cameras, privacy, or data collection. Clearly, those are important discussions, but they miss the larger issue. The controversy is not primarily about cameras. It is about trust and leadership.

Communities want to trust their police departments and have confidence that their leaders will use technology responsibly. They want to know who has access to their information, how long it will be stored, whether it will be shared with others, and who is accountable if something goes wrong. And they want a voice in this. Technology did not create those questions. It simply exposed them.

A New Relationship Is Emerging

Over the next few years, the convergence of increased policing costs and a dwindling candidate pool will compel police agencies to become increasingly dependent on private technology companies. Those companies will provide artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital evidence management, drones, robotics, officer wellness tools, predictive analytics, cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and technologies that have not yet been invented.

This relationship has enormous potential. Private industry has historically driven innovation faster than government can, and police agencies have benefited from remarkable advances created by entrepreneurs, engineers, and researchers. Many companies sincerely want to make communities safer, and many have developed products that save lives. Those contributions deserve recognition.

At the same time, police departments and technology companies operate under fundamentally different incentives, and understanding those differences is becoming one of the defining leadership challenges of this decade.

A police chief measures success by safer neighborhoods, stronger community trust, constitutional policing, officer wellness, and organizational legitimacy. A publicly traded technology company measures success differently. Its leaders have a legal and fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value. Investors have loud, clear voices demanding significant returns. Growth matters. Revenue matters. Market share matters. Quarterly earnings matter.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. It is how our economic system works. But problems arise when police leaders begin to assume that because a company serves the public safety market, its priorities will mirror those of policing.

The Interests Are Not Identical

People often assume that because technology companies build products for public safety, their interests automatically align with those of police agencies. In many cases, they do. Both want safer communities, better information, and more effective public safety operations.

But those interests are not identical.

A company may favor broader data sharing because it increases the value of its platform. A police department may conclude that broader sharing weakens community trust. A vendor may encourage an agency to expand subscriptions across multiple divisions because doing so creates recurring revenue. The agency, however, may determine that the additional capabilities provide only marginal value.

Similarly, a company may have little incentive to make its products interoperable with competitors if proprietary systems help retain customers. Police agencies, on the other hand, benefit when information flows securely across platforms and organizational boundaries.

None of these examples require bad intentions. In fact, many technology companies are led by people who genuinely want to improve policing. They are good, ethical, and talented people. They are simply operating according to different organizational missions and incentives. Recognizing that difference is not cynicism. It is good governance and it’s what being good stewards of the public’s investment in community safety demands.

The Next Leadership Competency

Historically, police executives needed to understand budgets, personnel, labor relations, criminal law, investigations, and community engagement. Those skills remain essential. But the next generation of police leaders will need another competency that has rarely been part of executive development.

They must understand technology, its markets, and the implications of its use in policing.

That does not mean becoming software engineers. It means understanding how technologies like AI work and how the companies that create it operate. It means understanding how digital ecosystems evolve, and how vendor incentives influence business decisions. It also means becoming fluent in “vendor-speak” and sophisticated consumers of technology rather than enthusiastic purchasers of it.

The questions police leaders ask before adopting new technology will increasingly determine whether that technology strengthens or weakens public trust.

Who owns the data? Who can access it? Can it be shared or sold? Under what circumstances? What happens if the company is acquired or goes out of business? Can the agency retrieve its information in a usable format if the contract ends? Does the system create dependence on a single vendor? How does the artificial intelligence make decisions? Can those decisions be independently audited? How often are algorithms updated? Who validates their performance? Who bears responsibility when errors occur?

These are no longer technical questions delegated to the IT unit. They are leadership questions that deserve executive attention.

Buying Technology Is Easy. Governing It Is Hard.

Most police agencies have developed procurement processes for purchasing technology. Far fewer have developed mature governance systems for managing it after implementation.

Buying technology is an event. Governing technology to further community trust is a continuous responsibility.

Effective governance requires ongoing audits, policy reviews, transparency, training, performance evaluation, legal oversight, cybersecurity assessments, and meaningful community engagement. It also requires leaders who are willing to revisit decisions as technology evolves rather than assuming today's policies will remain adequate tomorrow.

Perhaps most importantly, governance requires the courage to say no. This is especially true for the “AI all the time, everywhere” world in which we now find ourselves.

Not every useful technology should be adopted. Not every software feature should be activated simply because it exists. Not every dataset should be shared simply because it is technically possible. Leadership requires distinguishing between what can be done and what should be done.

The Public Is Paying Attention

The public is becoming far more sophisticated and concerned about technology than many agencies realize. People understand that personal data has value. They know digital information rarely disappears. They recognize that artificial intelligence can make mistakes and that cybersecurity failures have real consequences. And they believe their privacy has never been more at-risk.

Increasingly, communities want to know not only what technology police use, but why they use it, how it is governed, and who is accountable when problems arise.

This presents an extraordinary opportunity.

Police agencies that embrace transparency, publish governance standards, explain their decisions, and invite community oversight and participation in selecting technological solutions to crime problems can actually strengthen trust through technology rather than diminish it. When handled well, technology becomes evidence of accountability instead of secrecy.

Avoiding the Police-Industrial Complex

The phrase police-industrial complex is intentionally provocative. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the term military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address. He warned that the growing relationship between government, private industry, and research institutions could become so interconnected that private interests might gradually exert undue influence over public policy. His concern was not that defense contractors or the military were acting improperly. Viewing his comments through today’s lenses, one can extrapolate how he was cautioning us that three conditions could emerge over time:

• increasingly interlocking relationships among private and public institutions;

• a system that works against the national interest by perpetuating itself regardless of actual need;

• a concentration of economic and political influence that could threaten democracy.

Those same dynamics deserve consideration as policing becomes more dependent on advanced technology. A modern police-industrial complex could emerge through increasingly interconnected relationships among police agencies, technology companies, consultants, researchers, and government funding programs. Most of these partnerships are both legitimate and beneficial. Police agencies need innovative tools, and the private sector is often best positioned to develop them. The concern is not the existence of these partnerships, but the incentives they create if left largely unchecked.

Over time, those incentives can become self-reinforcing. Technology purchases can generate demand for additional systems, expanded data collection, new subscriptions, and continuing investments that are driven as much by institutional momentum as by demonstrated public safety outcomes. At the same time, vendors, government agencies, industry associations, researchers, and other stakeholders may collectively gain increasing influence over procurement decisions, legislation, professional standards, and public expectations. None of this requires bad intentions. It is simply the natural result of organizations pursuing their own legitimate interests.

That is the concern behind the phrase police-industrial complex. It is not an accusation that technology companies, police agencies, researchers, or policymakers are acting in bad faith. Rather, it is a recognition that whenever public institutions and private enterprise become closely intertwined, leaders must remain vigilant. Innovation is essential to the future of policing, but it must remain guided by public safety, constitutional principles, transparency, and community trust rather than institutional inertia or market incentives.

Eisenhower’s warning deserves renewed attention.

The police-industrial complex is not a prediction. It is a possibility. Whether it emerges depends largely on the decisions made by police leaders, elected officials, policymakers, vendors, and the communities they serve.

The solution is not to reject technology or distrust private industry. Quite the opposite. Innovation has made policing more effective in countless ways and will continue to do so. The objective is to ensure that technological innovation in policing remains guided by democratic values rather than market forces.

That begins with adopting clear principles for the responsible use of technology. It requires governance structures that include legal, operational, technical, ethical, and community perspectives. It means demanding transparency from vendors, insisting on meaningful contractual protections, and investing in technology literacy throughout the organization.

Police leaders cannot effectively govern what they do not understand.

This is why the Future Policing Institute’s Center on Policing and Artificial Intelligence (COP-AI) was created. Its mission is “to advance policing’s safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence.” It will increasingly produce practical, easy-to-understand commentary about police AI and develop concepts and tools policing can use to become more effective, empathetic, and just while simultaneously intertwining operations and analysis with AI. The first such product of COP-AI was a model policy for the use of large language AI models by police agencies. This was followed by the Guiding Principles for Responsible AI in Policing.

Leadership Will Decide

Technology will continue advancing whether policing is ready or not. Artificial intelligence will become more capable. Private companies will continue investing billions of dollars into products designed for public safety. The pace of innovation is unlikely to slow.

None of those developments should determine the future of policing. Leadership and community input should.

A self-perpetuating police-industrial complex is not inevitable. If it solidifies, it will not be because technology made it unavoidable. It will be because police leaders and policymakers failed to provide the governance, transparency, and accountability needed to ensure that public interests remained ahead of private ones.

If police leaders remain grounded in their public mission, demand transparency, insist on accountability, and remember that technology exists to serve communities rather than investors, innovation and public trust can reinforce one another. If they fail to do so, policing risks allowing commercial incentives to shape public safety in ways the public never intended.

The future of policing will not be defined by the technologies we purchase. It will be defined by the principles we refuse to compromise, the trust we refuse to betray, and our commitment to policing that is effective, empathetic, and just.

About the Author

Chief Jim Bueermann (ret.) is the founder and president of the Future Policing Institute and a Fellow of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University and at the Center for Public Safety and Justice at the University of Virginia. He has spent nearly 50 years in various aspects of policing. He retired from the Redlands Police Department (CA) after 33 years. His last 13 years of service were as the Chief of Police and Director of Housing, Recreation, and Senior Services. He is a retired president of the National Police Foundation (now the National Policing Institute), a former Executive Fellow of the USDOJ’s National Institute of Justice and a policing consultant. To read his full bio, click HERE.