Several police departments across the country are deploying artificial intelligence to write incident reports on behalf of officers, and while the software could raise questions in court, experts say the technology could be a boon to law enforcement.
The Oklahoma City Police Department was one of the first to test Draft One, an AI-powered software that analyzes audio from police body cameras and radio communications to create police reports that can later be used as the basis for criminal charges or as evidence in court.
Since then, Associated Press The department told Fox News Digital it was putting the program on hold after detailing the software and its use in a late August article.
“The use of AI report generation has been paused, so I will not be discussing it at this time,” Capt. Valerie Littlejohn said in an email. “It was paused while we worked out all the details with the District Attorney's Office.”
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Draft One, an AI software developed by police technology company Axon, is displayed on a screen at the Oklahoma City Police Department. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
According to POLITICOAt least seven police departments across the country are using Draft One, which police technology company Axon created for use with its widely available body cameras.
“I've never met a cop who liked paperwork,” said Paul Mauro, a former NYPD lieutenant and now lawyer, adding that each report takes at least 30 minutes to complete, depending on the officer.
“Sometimes you have to prepare multiple reports — a complaint report, an arrest report and then a certificate of property seized,” he explained. “Then there might be other reports, like a request for a narcotics analysis, an intelligence report, a juvenile report, etc.”
“That's why reports become so tedious,” he continued. “There are reports for everything.”
Mauro said officers could write anywhere from dozens to hundreds of reports a year, depending on which department they work for.
Artificial intelligence could help officers focus on policing rather than administrative tasks, experts said. (Amy Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
But while AI technology could provide templates for these reports, freeing up officers to focus more on policing, it's important to check the results produced for errors or “AI hallucinations,” a technical term for the inaccurate or misleading results that AI software sometimes produces.
“If police become lazy and are not in a position to adopt what is written in the report, even if they tick the bottom box; [indicating that they reviewed the report]”I understand when an officer says in court, 'I was really busy, I looked at the report, I checked the box, I arrested a white guy, and the report said I was looking for a Hispanic guy, and I missed that,'” Mauro said. “But when you look at things objectively, that's human.”
But the reports must be reviewed by the officer's superiors at each police station, and that extra layer of assurance won't go away, he said.
Mauro said AI-generated police reports would improve the consistency of police reports, and the software could also be used to conduct analyses that would take humans months to complete.
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“Using things like drop-down menus adds a free-form feel to every police report,” Mauro said. “If we had a chatbot that standardized this, we could use the same chatbot, because right now police are using this kind of thing to analyze patterns.”
“AI can look for commonalities that might take a human to sift through reams of data scattered across the U.S..” [But] A chatbot crawling the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) database, which has access to reports from different states, can very quickly identify commonalities between different cases, saving a lot of time and increasing accuracy.”
But Mauro said the software should initially be used for low-level property and misdemeanor crimes, and that police departments should work out the kinks and “get their lawyers involved from the get-go.”
“We need to make sure it's done fairly and legally, but we also need to be mindful of the tactics that are used to undermine it,” Mauro said.
He compared the introduction of AI technology in police work to the adoption of Axon body cameras, which are now standard for police departments.
“In New York City's body camera program, when they put body cameras on New York police officers, the officers really resisted it. They did it because anti-police activists wanted it.” [But] “In the end, we ended up upholding the officers' version of events more than 90 percent of the time, and it was one that the union strongly supported,” Mauro said.
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Officers at Oklahoma City Police Department headquarters are wearing Axon body cameras. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
Similarly, standardizing automated reporting could also help officers.
Another potential issue is the “CSI effect,” in which advances in DNA analysis and the popularity of police dramas have made juries wary of convicting criminals without DNA evidence, even for “the most obvious crimes,” Mauro said.
“As a police officer, I think there can be an AI effect, especially in the area of false positives, where what you're saying is accurate but the AI doesn't fully back up what you're saying. There's a tendency to say, 'Well, AI can't make mistakes, it's a computer.'”
Politico's investigation also revealed that police departments have no way of distinguishing between AI-generated police reports and those written by human officers after they're entered into the system, but Axon told the outlet it has access to this information and will share it with law enforcement agencies if requested.
Axon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
