Sheriff's department is looking into use of AI chatbots to write crime reports

Police reports created through artificial intelligence sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but it is not.

In April, public safety tech firm Axon announced it came out with Draft One — software that creates high-quality police report narratives in seconds based on auto-transcribed body-worn camera audio. A policeman in Oklahoma City said the tool churned out a report in eight seconds and it was “a better report than I could have ever written.”

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jayme Gonzales said the agency is looking into incorporating the software, which would save deputies time doing reports and allow them to respond to more calls.

BCSO, the Albuquerque Police Department and New Mexico State Police use Axon products such as body cameras.

The Journal reached out to APD and New Mexico State Police about the emerging AI technology but had not heard back by late Monday.

BCSO is “well over a year out” before starting tests on it, Gonzales said.

“This will be a game changer for law enforcement if implemented well, so we will take our time and do thorough research before moving forward,” Gonzales said.

Reducing the time deputies spend writing reports would benefit the community as more deputies would be able “to immediately respond to calls for service and reduce the amount of overtime required to finish reports,” she said.

“Law enforcement officers spent nearly 40% of their shift on report writing,” Gonzales said. “With staffing issues across the country, I would imagine law enforcement agencies (see) the need to get creative when it comes to freeing up their officers from hours of report-writing to prioritize responding to calls for service.”

One of those agencies is the Oklahoma City Police Department.

‘Better report than I could ever have written’

A body camera captured every word and bark uttered as police Sgt. Matt Gilmore and his K-9, Gunner, searched for a group of suspects for nearly an hour.

Normally, the Oklahoma City police sergeant would grab his laptop and spend another 30 to 45 minutes writing up a report about the search. But this time he had artificial intelligence write the first draft.

Pulling from all the sounds and radio chatter picked up by the microphone attached to Gilmore’s body camera, the AI tool churned out a report in eight seconds.

“It was a better report than I could have ever written, and it was 100% accurate. It flowed better,” Gilmore said. It even documented a fact he didn’t remember hearing — another officer’s mention of the color of the car the suspects ran from.

Oklahoma City’s police department is one of a handful to experiment with AI chatbots to produce the first drafts of incident reports. Police officers who have tried it are enthused about the time-saving technology, while some prosecutors, police watchdogs and legal scholars have concerns about how it could alter a fundamental document in the criminal justice system that plays a role in who gets prosecuted or imprisoned.

Built with the same technology as ChatGPT and sold by Axon, best known for developing the Taser and as the dominant U.S. supplier of body cameras, it could become what Gilmore describes as another “game changer” for police work.

“They become police officers because they want to do police work, and spending half their day doing data entry is just a tedious part of the job that they hate,” said Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith, describing the new AI product as having the “most positive reaction” of any product the company has introduced.

“Now, there’s certainly concerns,” Smith added. In particular, he said district attorneys prosecuting a criminal case want to be sure that police officers — not solely an AI chatbot — are responsible for authoring their reports because they may have to testify in court about what they witnessed.

“They never want to get an officer on the stand who says, well, ‘The AI wrote that, I didn’t,’” Smith said.

AI technology is not new to police agencies, which have adopted algorithmic tools to read license plates, recognize suspects’ faces, detect gunshot sounds and predict where crimes might occur. Many of those applications have come with privacy and civil rights concerns and attempts by legislators to set safeguards. But the introduction of AI-generated police reports is so new that there are few, if any, guardrails guiding their use.

Concerns about society’s racial biases and prejudices getting built into AI technology are just part of what Oklahoma City community activist aurelius Francisco finds “deeply troubling” about the new tool, which he learned about from The Associated Press.

“The fact that the technology is being used by the same company that provides Tasers to the department is alarming enough,” said francisco, a co-founder of the Foundation for Liberating Minds in Oklahoma City.

He said automating those reports will “ease the police’s ability to harass, surveil and inflict violence on community members. While making the cop’s job easier, it makes Black and brown people’s lives harder.”

Before trying out the tool in Oklahoma City, police officials showed it to local prosecutors who advised some caution before using it on high-stakes criminal cases. For now, it’s only used for minor incident reports that don’t lead to someone getting arrested.

“So no arrests, no felonies, no violent crimes,” said Oklahoma City police Capt. Jason Bussert, who handles information technology for the 1,170-officer department.