NightHawk analyzes cell phone data, GPS location, ALPR data on suspects
After unanimously denying the contract in August, the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on Monday, Oct. 5, to approve a three-year, $13,847 NightHawk subscription for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office.
Supervisor and Vice Chairwoman Nikki Check [D-District 3] and Supervisor Chris Kuknyo [R-District 4] voted against it.
Managed by LeadsOnline LLC, NightHawk software maps and analyzes cell phone and social media data. Detectives upload raw spreadsheets from cell providers and phone extractions, and the software cleans up formatting errors, translates data into a readable format, converts cell tower data and GPS coordinates into visual maps, pinpoints a suspect’s location over time and flags overlapping phone numbers, shared locations and common contacts between multiple suspects.
The NightHawk features cited by LeadsOnline include: “Upload and analyze multiple file types, including text and social media, to translate data into actionable leads.”
The Subject Interaction Filtering Tool analyzes calls and messages, events, GPS trackers, gunfire acoustic identifiers, and automated license plate reader hits.
The subscription will be paid from a $2 million state appropriation for a YCSO intelligence center that the board accepted on Nov. 5.
“AI is touching every piece of technology now,” YCSO Sheriff David Rhodes [R] said Oct. 5. NightHawk “is no different. It is an AI tool that allows the detectives, when they’ve seized cell phones, constitutionally, subject to a search warrant, to download the information on those cell phones, to organize and analyze the content of those cell phones.”
Rhodes cited a case in the Verde Valley where the suspect allegedly had 1.9 million images of child pornography that NightHawk could have searched for the investigation.
However, the approved software agreement does much more.
“Entering into this agreement benefits the county by providing the Criminal Investigations Bureau with a platform that fuses multiple data sources — including call records, Global Positioning System data, social media, and License Plate Recognition hits — to build actionable investigative leads,” the Aug. 19 meeting packet reads. “NightHawk supports large-scale investigations by enabling detectives to visualize subject interactions, generate search warrants and collaborate across agencies. This capability directly supports YCSO’s public safety mission and its efforts to combat drug and human trafficking.”
State law assigned those missions to the YCSO intelligence center through Senate Bill 1735 §118-30, which provided the $2 million — which is paying for the NightHawk subscription — which makes the center “responsible for collecting, analyzing, synthesizing and disseminating real-time, actionable information.”
The agreement the board approved on Oct. 5 is identical to the version it denied on Aug. 19, according to a document comparison. The service agreement approved on Oct. 5 still shows a “due date” for the first year of the service as Sept. 1.
“Did we not deny this contract in the last couple of months?” Check asked.
“You did, and so, to refresh your memory, this came before the board, and one of the things that it said was it allows you to categorize ALPR data,” Rhodes said. “Like you can use this to essentially organize that data, but we don’t have Flock cameras at the sheriff’s office, and we didn’t have that data, so that wasn’t a use that we needed it for. So at that time, I wanted to make sure and circle back to each of the board members to make sure that you knew that this was not an ALPR contract.”
In August, the board also unanimously denied a separate YCSO request for three new mobile ALPRs for its patrol vehicles. The board had previously approved $74,620 for mobile YCSO ALPRs in June 2023.
While YCSO does not own any Flock cameras, it searches of other law enforcement agencies’ networks. The board granted permission as a consent item via a Memorandum of Understanding with Flock on Nov. 2, 2022 that allows YCSO to search the Flock network.
The NEWS asked YCSO’s Records Department to provide the YCSO Flock search history from Oct. 19, 2022, to the present, but YCSO has not yet fulfilled that public records request.
During the meeting, Supervisor and Chairman Brooks Compton [R-District 1] said the board will hold a study session on AI and data-sharing technologies in December or January. Check asked to hold the NightHawk vote until after that session.
“I would prefer to vote on this one and possibly” a separate AI consulting contract “after that work session to better understand the full implications,” Check said.
“I don’t think it’s wise to delay this in terms of officer safety and public safety for the study session,” Compton said. “The most important thing to me is public safety, and knowing that this may expire, I would prefer to move forward with this today and then bring it up at a study session later.”
“We don’t all understand again what goes on and how you have to conduct your department and all of your deputies and what they do,” Supervisor Mary Mallory [R-District 5] said. “But that’s OK because we don’t need to know all of those details. That’s how you keep us safe. So I’m perfectly fine with this item.”
Other Items
The board, with Check opposed, approved a $40,000 YCSO contract with Rudra Consulting for professional artificial intelligence advisory and custom software development services.
The board unanimously accepted $372,700 from Senate Bill 1847 for YCSO’s school safety efforts and a $307,000 memorandum that allows Mohave County to participate in Yavapai County’s Reentry Program Database.
An additional $463,635 — mostly to be paid out of the YCSO intel center funding — was unanimously approved with Carahsoft Technology Corp. for a Peregrine Technologies software platform.
“The Peregrine platform integrates data from multiple YCSO systems including Spillman CAD, Spillman RMS, Spillman JMS, Axon Evidence.com and Axon Standards, into a single point of access for search, analysis, reporting, and information-sharing,” the agenda reads. “YCSO also serves as the lead agency for the Yavapai County Consortium, a group of regional law enforcement and public safety agencies, and the agreement includes an option, exercisable at YCSO’s sole discretion, to extend the service to those participating agencies.”
The participating agencies include the Camp Verde Marshal’s Office, Cottonwood, Sedona, Prescott, Prescott Valley and Wickenburg police department and the Rocky Mountain Information Network, a regional information sharing system of agencies in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and three Canadian provinces.
“Neither the city nor SPD has agreed to participate,” Sedona City Spokeswoman Julie Graham wrote to the NEWS. “We participated in an informational meeting to review the program; however, no agreements have been made.”
