Jayfus Doswell, one of Baltimore’s brightest and accomplished scholars, is leading the charge in addressing a national crisis through technology.
Police brutality, particularly against Black males, has been an ongoing problem in the U.S. The issue has emerged to the point of being considered an epidemic by many political and social leaders.
Juxtopia, a Baltimore-based biomedical and information technology company, has joined the fight against police brutality through the development of an artificial intelligence-enabled product designed to address “the public health disparity of police violence and murders against Black males.”
The effort seeks to investigate improved police training with what is called the “Juxtopia CAMMRAD Police training intervention.”
The Context Aware Mobile Mixed Reality Assisted Device (CAMMRAD) Police Trainer or is an AI-powered, wearable augmented reality e-training and evaluation system formed to train police officers on de-escalation and non-lethal use of force. The product also aims to evaluate police on cultural competency, empathy and ethical metrics.
Among the nation’s innovative leaders in human performance product development, Juxtopia was founded by Doswell in 2001. He is also the company’s president and CEO.
The police artificial intelligence trainer is called “Bes,” bearing the namesake of an ancient Egyptian deity of domestic protection, consistent with a foundational obligation of law enforcement to “protect and serve.”
Doswell, an esteemed scholar and Baltimore native, was solely responsible for the development of the artificial intelligence police trainer concept. His company, Juxtopia, will create the product.
Here is how the law enforcement AI product will function, according to Doswell:
- Police officers will wear Juxtopia augmented reality head-mounted displays that will apply the use of optimal see-through displays to project digital information in his or her point of view.
- Upon arrival at the scene – or in the vicinity – of possible criminal activity, augmented reality goggles can detect firearms and other weapons, subsequently notifying the officer whether those weapons are a threat or are held by a human.
- This AI-powered product will send audio cues to an officer on how to apprehend. The officer can speak into a microphone for guidance on how to properly apprehend in accordance with state and federal laws.
- As an officer is speaking with an assailant, crime perpetrator or potential perpetrator, the camera-equipped goggles will use AI speech recognition to facilitate speech-to-text translation. After being encoded into different lexicons, the text will be interpreted by natural language processing algorithms to identify whether certain words being used comply with protocol and professional standards.
- This would all be done in real time and could eventually replace or supplement body cameras.
Doswell said Juxtopia plans to initially introduce the product in a training facility for law enforcement. The company hopes to make this product available on a national and international scale, beginning with Baltimore and the Mid-Atlantic region.
“That’s who our target market is first – for training officers,” he said. “So the training facility may have scenarios for administering a warrant, domestic violence, active shooter and person in crisis.”
The meticulously thought-out AI police trainer was originally conceptualized following the George Floyd incident in 2020 that sparked an international racial reckoning. It was around that time that Doswell and his team wrote and submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health.
Consequently, NIH awarded Juxtopia a grant totaling $254,250 that will enable the company to successfully carry out its innovative CAMMRAD police training intervention project.
“We were motivated by George Floyd’s killing… the team and I, we had to do something,” Doswell said. “We really decided to address this type of disparity with technology.”
Juxtopia plans to officially launch the product in the last quarter of 2025, Doswell said. To test the product, Juxtopia will partner with the Baltimore Police Department, other law enforcement agencies and Morgan State University’s Center for Equitable Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Systems.
All artificial intelligence algorithms are being done within Juxtopia solely by “Black and Brown people,” Doswell said, pointing out the company’s targeted mission and commitment to cultivating a diverse workforce.
The company’s engineers developed its own hardware and augmented reality head-mounted displays for the CAMMRAD police training product.
Juxtopia used standard programming languages to develop software while creating its own AI model and language model, focusing on police cases. Individuals working on the CAMMRAD project programmed and trained the model to be intelligent enough to train police officers through augmented reality, Doswell highlighted.
This product is particularly unique, considering it will be the first of its kind with regard to the intersection of augmented reality and law enforcement training. This product simply aims to break down a barrier that adversely affects Black Americans.
“I’m a Black man. Black men are being killed. We need to be able to protect ourselves,” said Doswell, a respected STEM leader and researcher.
“This epidemic that’s been going on since we’ve been here in America as Black men – somebody or something has to eradicate this disparity. If this disparity is not eradicated, then Juxtopia will eradicate this disparity. If anybody gets in our way, then we’ll address that too. That’s the Juxtopia type of energy.”
Fascinating!!