VeriPol - Detect false police reports

The filing of fake police reports is quite common in Spain, especially for low level crimes. This practice is regarded as quite troublesome, as it can bring significant consequences for individuals, wasting valuable police resources and is often used in combination with other fraudulent behaviour. Recently, the Spanish national police have adopted the VeriPol, an AI system in order to detect false police reports. The system was designed to be integrated into the existing Spanish National Police information system called SIDENPOL, allowing for easier use and integration into existing work practices. Its development was the result of a collaborative project between the University of Cardiff, the Charles III University of Madrid and the Spanish National Police. The database of police reports was made available for the researchers of the universities in order to train the AI system on. For this, 1122 reports were used, including 534 true and 588 false reports. VeriPol exploits a combination of Natural Language Processing and machine learning classification algorithms, capable of estimating the probability of false police reports with significant accuracy. In addition to that, the system also enables insights into the differences between false and true police reports. For example, pilot studies found that false police reports are more likely to include shorter statements, focused on the objects which were stolen and lacking details. Following the development, the system was tested in pilot situations in both the police department of Malaga and Murcia. These pilots have been regarded as successful because an increase in the number of false reports was detected. Furthermore, an anonymous survey among the staff showed that the VeriPol system was useful, easy to use but should include more functionalities to detect other forms of crime. Now the system has been rolled out for use by all the departments of the Spanish National Police. The expected impact of the use of the system is to both detect false reports early, leaving more police resources available to focus on other tasks and reports, while at the same time deterring people from filing fake statements in the first place. An additional benefit of the system is to gain more insights into how people lie to police officers as well as to gain more knowledge in detecting true and false police reports.