CW@60: From Z Cars to The Capture – how technology has transformed UK policing

Analogue to AI

In the analogue era of the 1960s, nobody had a computer or a mobile telephone and cyber-enabled crime simply did not exist. Instead, and as depicted in the original 1962 BBC trailer for Z Cars, a typical police duty for a uniform constable of the period was to help eject unwilling customers from the pub at closing time.

By contrast, the highly sophisticated work of DI Rachel Carey in The Capture gives us a fleeting an insight into the AI-enabled policing surveillance capabilities deployed in the modern era.

My own journey in policing commenced in Edinburgh. In 1978, a major supplier of portable radio equipment for UK policing was the Danish company Storno. The personal radios – there were often more officers than available radios – were large and clunky with very few channels and poor reception.

In the real world, the AI-enabled policing techniques of today have changed the fundamental nature of the UK policing systems that existed in the 1960s. Exactly where policing technology will go in the next 60 years is impossible to say

One of my duties as a young cadet was to staff the divisional switchboard when the civilian operator was on lunch break. Such was the telephony infrastructure of the period that police stations had manual switchboards known as cord boards, where incoming calls had to be manually connected to the relevant department via flexible cords with plugs. I often got this wrong.

Beyond the first iteration of the UK Police National Computer (PNC), communications between police forces were conducted via a Telex machine which was an electro-mechanical device used to send and receive typed text messages over telephone lines. The output was massive and unsolicited quantities of paper as the machines – at least in Edinburgh – defaulted to print everything.

The 1980s saw the introduction of multi-channel police radios such as the Motorola HT600E, which replaced the cumbersome single-crystal frequency models and upgraded officers to 99-channel capabilities. This made cross-divisional and cross-force communications readily available for the first time.

In 1985 came the introduction of the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – better known as Holmes – as a direct response to the Yorkshire Ripper case in the late 1970s, bringing standard police incident room procedures to the UK and allowing thousands of investigative actions to be simultaneously tracked for the first time.

Digital policing

The 1990s were a watershed decade for police technology, transitioning from paper-heavy records to data-driven, digital policing. At the same time, the early 1990s witnessed the widespread public uptake of mobile telephony with networks like One2One and Orange launched, opening mobile phones to the public and gradually making them more affordable.

This also meant that the police were instantly contactable by the public – and thus the demands on policing increased exponentially. The era was also defined by the introduction of Microsoft Windows 95 and the advent of computerised crime mapping and statistical management.

In 1995 we witnessed the creation of the UK National DNA Database (NDNAD) and in 1999 the introduction of Ident1 – the UK national automated fingerprint identification system. Such developments enabled biometric and forensic data to be automatically shared on a UK basis for the first time.

In the 2000s UK policing technology underwent a dramatic modernisation, transitioning to national digital networks. The era was defined by the introduction of secure digital radios, vast expansions of CCTV networks, and major upgrades to intelligence sharing.

The following decade brought digital mobility, body-worn cameras, cloud-based data sharing, and artificial intelligence to UK policing, making it completely unrecognisable to the nostalgic 1960s world of Sergeant Lynch.

Digital evidence overload

In 2026 such technological advancement means that UK policing has now become the victim of its own success due to the demand-creation cycle. AI-enabled policing creates unmanageable demand by accelerating evidence generation in areas such as digital forensics and body-worn cameras.

This results in digital evidence overload and shifts demand onto police officers who are already overwhelmed with the sheer volume of evidential leads, the requirements of disclosure, and the need to manually verify automated evidential output.

The contemporary challenge for policing is no longer about deploying innovative technology, but instead about developing systems of governance to prevent the creation of automated digital workloads that are no longer serviceable by humans.

The highly sophisticated work of DI Carey in The Capture marries fact and fiction and in so doing unrealistically presents her as the only police officer in the UK not troubled by a heavy workload or the inconvenience of paperwork.

In the real world, the AI-enabled policing techniques of today have changed the fundamental nature of the UK policing systems that existed in the 1960s. Exactly where policing technology will go in the next 60 years is impossible to say.

All that can be said is that unless strategic governance over such technologies in policing is improved, the success of AI-enabled policing offers the potential to overwhelm the entire criminal justice system.

Brian Plastow is the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner.