BURLINGTON, N.C. (WGHP) -- Alan Balog knows law enforcement. In fact, Burlington’s police chief’s been around it all his life. His father, Steve Balog, served as Alamance County’s district attorney from 1986 to 1997. He also served as a superior court judge from 1997 until he retired in 2007. “I had the opportunity to meet a lot of law enforcement officers growing up,” Alan Balog told me recently. “And I developed a strong respect for them and the nature of the work they did.” Balog graduated from Williams High School, got a degree in political science from UNC-Chapel Hill and today is the chief of police in the city where he grew up. His department is also North Carolina’s Law Enforcement Agency of the Year. “I recognized that policing can be very exciting, that it has a tremendous amount of variety and more importantly, it’s an opportunity to help people,” he said. And for Balog, it’s also been a challenge. When he became chief in the spring of 2023, the department was working to overcome what he calls a “dire” manpower shortage. “When officer staffing goes down to a level where you have to be fully reactive, you don’t really have the opportunity to try to prevent crime or prevent victimization from happening to people,” he told me. Today, the department is close to being fully staffed. At this writing, Balog has only two positions that need filling. Balog admits the staffing turnaround began as his predecessor, Chief Alan Long, was heading into retirement. But Balog himself has kept the momentum and, in doing so, has —to use his words—“systematically changed the way police work was being done in the city.” He says the city council deciding the improve officer pay and benefits was critical. But it was also shifting the responsibilities of sworn officers to other professional staff in a way the police work was still done well. This included the establishment of a team of civilian crash investigators to handle minor traffic mishaps. This has enabled more sworn officers to handle the more serious calls. “You have somebody else who’s just as well-trained, who’s just as knowledgeable do that type of work, but they’re a civilian,” Balog said. Burlington Police are also facing many of the same issues other departments are facing. They include more and more young people using firearms to commit crimes and officers seizing guns on the streets that are more sophisticated. “Ghost guns, weapons that don’t have a serial number that didn’t come from any kind of legitimate sale, weapons that have been converted to shoot fully automatic,” is how Balog describes these guns. But from a law enforcement perspective, Balog believes his department’s biggest challenge is people—namely eyewitnesses of crimes--- not cooperating with police, fearing retribution. “There are challenges with getting folks to come forward and tell us what happened,” he told me. But in a way, the department’s emphasis on technology is helping counteract that reluctance. For instance, if you have video and sound of a crime taking place, that could be as valuable as an eyewitness account. As part of a partnership with the University of New Orleans, the Burlington Police Department was able to buy—at a discounted rate—12 sophisticated cameras its placed in high crime areas around the city as well as heavily travelled intersections. Images from all the cameras appear in the department’s 911 Communications Center. “So if there’s a crime happening in that space, we have video to go back and watch and review what happened,” Balog said. The department is also in the process of building what it calls an “Aerial Reconnaissance and Tactical Intelligence Center.” Part of it will be like what other law enforcement agencies refer to as “Real Time Crime Centers.” It’s another place for officers to monitor strategically placed cameras around the city. The “aerial” part is already in operation. In fact, it launched –literally—in the summer of 2024. It includes a control area where an officer can control two drones. One sits on top of police headquarters. The other’s on top of one of the city’s fire departments. This “drone as a first responder” program has already helped officers track and capture a fleeing suspect. The drones can also often arrive at crime and fire scenes faster than the first responders themselves—giving them a visual image of what exactly they’re facing while they’re on their ways to the scenes. Last summer, Burlington Police also became the first law enforcement agency in North Carolina to use Truleo. It’s a pilot program not supported by taxpayer dollars. It’s marketed as an “artificial intelligence-powered police officer assistant.” In short, it screens all downloaded officer body camera video and flags things (like bad language or sudden changes in tone of voice) that could signal possible issues. Supervisors would only be capable of screening a small fraction of the video if this didn’t exist. “It provides immediate feedback to the officers about the quality of the work they’ve done,” Balog said. “And then the supervisors also get notifications and can conduct their own reviews of what’s happening in all these different interactions.” Combine that with “Good Sam” technology that allows 911 callers to share live smart phone camera video with officers, the Burlington Police Department is among the most technologically advanced departments of its size in the country. It’s also a major reason the North Carolina Police Executives Association named it “law enforcement agency of the year,” a recognition it awards annually to the agency that implements “innovative programs or policies not knowingly used elsewhere.” “The Burlington Police Department is always focused on doing policing the right way, treating people the way they want to be treated at the highest possible standards,” Balog stressed to me. “And that’s what we’ll continue to deliver.” Sounds like a person who really knows law enforcement.