Chicago turns to Artificial Intelligence in battle against Carjackings
AI disclosure: Images were created using Chat GPT Dall-E3. Story was formatted through Claude.ai.
Carjackings in the city of Chicago have been an ongoing conflict for the past few decades. These trends tend to fluctuate based on many different issues and various factors. In the early 2000’s to mid — 2010’s carjackings were less noticed than recent years. Back then law enforcement and city officials were more focused on serious crime at the time. Such as homicides, gun violence and drug related activities.
In the late 2010’s Carjackings began to rise, you might ask why? But this was the time that car technology and advancements really started to take off. For example the push button ignitions, this was something criminals really exploited. Also around this time is when law enforcement was starting to see a lot of youth involvement, this was a trend where many carjackings involved younger offenders.
For many residents in the Chicago area, it makes them feel unsafe, especially during the nighttime. Many concerns about personal safety have risen within this time, causing people to take extra precautions when parking their vehicle. Many things people do to avoid this conflict is to avoid driving at night, parking in parking garages, or parking in driveways and avoid parking on the street. This can be a real burden on people, especially when it comes to insurance costs. Many insurance companies raise their costs for people that live in areas like this because carjackings and vandalism is a big problem in these areas. In many areas like this it can cause a decline in trust within the community and people are less likely to look out for each other.
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This also affects businesses in many ways. A couple businesses that are being affected are Uber, Lyft, and any other delivery companies. It makes it very hard for these companies to operate in these high-risk areas. Not only is it hard to operate in these areas but companies must pay for accommodations such as high insurance costs, and paying for security costs for drivers leading into these high crime rated areas of Chicago. This also has a big influence on tourism, high crime rates are never good for tourism. This is a conflict because it forces businesses to upgrade their security systems. One big side of business that carjackings affect is real estate. When buying a property one of the most important things people look for is a safe environment. When lots of carjackings happen in these areas, people don’t feel safe living in these areas let alone raise families in these areas. So it makes it hard for real estate businesses to convince people to live in these areas.
After doing quick research on this topic I thought that I should talk to an expert to give me a good grasp on the situation. So I called my grandpa. His Name is Joe Ivener. He was a Chicago police officer from 2009–2017. This was a good source to talk to because he has seen many generations of people and different stages of crime in chicago. One question I asked him was “What do you think the biggest difference is in carjackings from now and from when you started your time as a police officer” he quickly responded with “ Well when I first started people weren’t that smart about stealing cars, they would pick just about any car they could get into and they would drive like they were late to something”. “But nowadays people will strategically pick cars close to highways and many times plan escape”. This surprised me in the sense of stealing a car in the middle of the city. Another thing he mentioned was “Carjackings in Chicago were at an all time high when the pandemic was happening. “Many kids were out of school and it threw the society off balance, Many economic changes were happening and routine changes were happening in society such as more delivery drivers and drivers being in isolated areas”, He said.
After hearing all of these issues I got to thinking, How can artificial intelligence help this problem? Well a couple ideas came to mind, Once being a surveillance camera. Just like how people use a ring camera on their door, maybe you could put one on your door or window. Sending you notifications every time a person walks by your door or even touches your door. Granted there would have to be a well designed app to go with this but just bear with me because I have a few other wonderful ideas. Using artificial intelligence you could get this notification that someone is touching your door and even talk through it, or maybe have the ability to play an alarming sound to therefore scare the carjacker off. By using this app you should be able to put all of your car info such as license plate number, car color, model, and any other add ons to your car like stickers are certain modifications. By putting in this info, when you notify the police about your car jacking they have all of the details they need to find your car. Who knows, with this type of technology the carjacking rates in Chicago could lower. But there’s only one way to find out and that’s to take action. We can’t just sit here and hope the carjacking rates in Chicago just abruptly go down, we must take action.
