As police increasingly embrace AI, some wait for regulations and proof it works • New Jersey Monitor

New Jersey officials have 'tiptoed around' regulating law enforcement's use of AI, which may be the most honest verb in the entire legislative lexicon. Back in 2022 the Attorney General's office solicited public comments on facial recognition technology and then issued no guidance whatsoever — four years of consultation, one ring binder, zero rules. To put that in terms the state might recognise: it held a listening exercise, collected the submissions, and misplaced the findings. That is not a regulatory gap. That is a regulatory policy, and it is performing flawlessly.

The legislature's contribution has been to introduce — twice since May 2025 — a bill that would merely study AI in policing, and to let it expire in committee both times. Not restrict. Not license. Not audit. Study. An entire branch of government has now twice failed to pass a request for additional paperwork, which takes a certain kind of stamina. This week it tried again with two bills: one to restrict government use of automated licence plate readers, another to limit how long the harvested data is kept. After sixteen months, the great ambition is to maybe stop the cameras eventually, and in the meantime to store the surveillance a touch more tastefully.

Meanwhile the police are, per the headline, 'increasingly embracing' AI, while 'some' wait for regulations and proof it works. Those are the ones who read the vendor contract. Everyone else is running the demo. We flagged the same instinct on the cybersecurity front — nobody in this industry waits on a legislature, because the queue is where good intentions go to be quietly composted. So the de facto rulebook for New Jersey policing AI remains whatever a sales rep can get a chief to sign before the coffee goes cold. Riveting oversight, that.