Redmond police used AI tool LongEye to solve a cold case by analyzing 60 hours of calls in minutes.
A new artificial intelligence tool is helping local law enforcement solve crimes, and in one case, it helped find a major clue in a cold case.
When a crime happens, police begin compiling a mountain of digital evidence including surveillance video, phone records, crime scene photos and interviews. It can be a lot to sort through, so Redmond Police are now using a new AI tool to help.
“Longeye is an investigative, I call it an investigative support tool,” said Redmond Police Chief Darrell Lowe. “It’s an AI-driven platform where investigators are able to upload digital information. It processes the information and provides, I’ll call it insights, to the investigators or reference points.”
Chief Lowe said the system helped investigators revisit a cold case by analyzing 60 hours of jail phone calls and pinpointing a key confession.
“Investigators had questions around whether there were one or two bullets fired,” Lowe said. “In one of those phone calls, the suspect confessed to firing two shots and hiding the shell casing underneath a deck.”
The AI tool helped detectives process those 60 hours of calls in a matter of minutes, saving what Chief Lowe described as significant time.
“That’s a week and a half of an investigator’s time, and that would be full time,” he said.
The company behind the software, Longeye, says it is designed to speed up investigations, not replace investigators.
“A lot of people picture this as like some black box where like out comes the ‘Steven did it,'” said Guillaume Delépine, Longeye’s co-founder and CEO. “But it’s really not like that. It’s a tool for a good investigator to move faster and be more thorough through these big, heavy data sets.”
Delépine said the software ranks files by how relevant they are to each case, helping officers focus on the key evidence first.
“The truth is, in the data somewhere, right?” Delépine said. “And it just makes better investigations, better trials. It’s good for everyone.”
Chief Lowe said using AI is not just about saving time, it is about giving detectives more time to serve victims and close cases.
“AI will not replace the need for actual officers or investigators,” he said. “But it will enhance their effectiveness.”
Redmond Police emphasize that Longeye does not create or predict information. It only points detectives to evidence they already have, helping them work smarter and faster.
Longeye is not grant-funded. Chief Lowe integrated the use of Longeye within his existing approved budget.
There are also multiple other agencies in Washington state currently considering using Longeye.
The 60 hours of jail phone call analysis demonstrates LongEye’s ability to process massive audio datasets that would require detectives to listen at normal speed, transcribe manually, and review repeatedly to catch subtle admissions buried in routine conversations.
The cold case breakthrough where the suspect confessed to firing two shots and hiding shell casings illustrates how AI pattern recognition identifies criminally relevant statements within mundane jail calls about commissary, visitors, and family matters that human reviewers might overlook during fatigue.
The week-and-a-half time savings Chief Lowe cites represents approximately 80 work hours that detectives can redirect toward interviewing witnesses, following up leads, or working additional cases rather than performing tedious audio review.
Redmond’s adoption of LongEye reflects the Eastside city’s tech-forward approach consistent with its proximity to Microsoft headquarters and concentration of technology workers who expect data-driven policing methods.
Guillaume Delépine’s “Steven did it” reference addresses public misconceptions about AI in law enforcement, clarifying the system provides investigative leads rather than definitive conclusions that might bias officers toward particular suspects.
The relevance ranking feature helps detectives prioritize evidence review in logical order, addressing the common problem where critical clues remain buried in case files because overwhelmed investigators lack time to examine every document thoroughly.
Chief Lowe’s budget integration rather than grant funding demonstrates confidence in LongEye’s value proposition, as the department committed existing resources rather than waiting for external funding that might never materialize or include restrictive conditions.
The emphasis that LongEye “does not create or predict information” addresses civil liberties concerns about predictive policing algorithms that have faced criticism for racial bias and constitutional violations in jurisdictions that deployed them without adequate oversight.
The jail phone call context for the confession suggests the suspect believed those conversations were private or that the volume of calls would prevent police from reviewing them all, an assumption LongEye’s processing capabilities invalidate.
Multiple Washington agencies considering LongEye adoption suggests Redmond is serving as a pilot site whose success or failure will influence procurement decisions by departments across the state evaluating similar AI investigative tools.
