Meet the Police Officers Using AI to Draft Police Reports – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy

This spring, I spent a day at the police station in Fort Collins, Colorado. It’s a division of about 240 officers serving a metropolis of practically 200,000 individuals at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills. It’s school city, dwelling to Colorado State University.

Nice to meet you, Clare. Emily, proper? Nice to meet you.

Last 12 months, Fort Collins grew to become one of the first police departments in the nation to begin utilizing Draft One, a software program program that makes use of synthetic intelligence to draft police experiences. It’s made by Axon, an organization that additionally sells teasers, physique cameras, and cloud storage for physique cam video to police departments throughout the nation. Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda instructed me why they determined to check out the software shortly after Axon launched it.

AI is coming; AI is right here, and it is going to be an element of our day by day lives, and we felt we’d relatively be early adopters and assist sort of make the program higher.

‘We deliver you a large number of tales on this podcast about how AI is reshaping the world round us. So once we realized about Draft One, we wished to take a deeper look as a result of this know-how has the potential to go mainstream. It’s nonetheless actually new. Axon launched it in the spring of 2024, nevertheless it’s already being utilized by cops in cities like Fort Collins, Colorado, and Lafayette, Indiana, and Tampa, Florida. Axon says it is the quickest rising product they’ve ever launched. But it is come at a time when the use of AI by regulation enforcement is controversial after experiments with different applied sciences have gone fallacious. And as I’ve realized all through this reporting, whereas police experiences may appear minor, they really have a significant impression on the felony justice course of. So if this new police software is being utilized by officers in your neighborhood, or your native police division is contemplating utilizing it, what ought to you realize about it? How is it altering day-to-day work for officers? And what authorized and moral questions does it increase? Over two episodes, we’re going to dive into these questions and extra. You’ll hear from officers with the Fort Collins PD, a authorized advocate, a felony justice professional, and one of Axon’s executives. I’m Clare Duffy, and this can be a particular episode of Terms of Service. We’ll dive in after a fast break. Draft One is a software program program that makes use of the audio from police-worn physique cameras to generate a draft of a police report that an officer is then prompted to end by filling in extra particulars. Axon is not the solely participant on this trade. Law enforcement tech firm Trulio makes the same AI police report software referred to as Field Notes. But Axon is a giant title in the regulation enforcement world, and rather a lot of the early conversations, analysis, and writing about AI-assisted police experiences deal with Draft One. The major pitch for it’s easy: They say it permits officers to spend much less of their time writing experiences and extra outing in the area. Here’s Chief Swoboda once more.

The half that actually opened my eyes and made me notice that is one thing larger and higher is a younger officer mentioned, you realize what? I’m so grateful for this program as a result of it is actually a wellness play. And I mentioned, properly, inform me extra. What do you imply by that? He goes, I’m busy out on the avenue. And so I’m going name to name, and I do know I’ve a report to write, and I’m going to the subsequent name, and I’ve one other report to write. It’s not very lengthy earlier than I do know I’ve 4 experiences to write. It used to weigh on his thoughts. Like I’ve to discover a while to begin writing these experiences. Well, now he feels a lot calmer about that as a result of he is aware of there is a draft ready for him for each of these calls. So, he goes, I’m simply much less anxious.

Fort Collins piloted Draft One final 12 months with a bunch of about 70 officers. They have been requested to monitor how lengthy it took them to write their experiences, with and with out the software. Officer Scott Brittingham was half of that check group.

We would kind out a police report and time it. We would paste that right into a doc. Then we’d do a separate Draft One report and time that, additionally paste that in so you possibly can see aspect by aspect how the two experiences examine. And experiences that have been taking me perhaps a half hour to 45 minutes to kind have been taking me 10 minutes or much less.

Scott can be a coaching officer, so he writes experiences himself, and he additionally reveals new hires how to write them.

Report writing was at all times one thing I took rather a lot of delight in and labored very onerous on, so I imagine that my experiences learn properly once I kind them, however that is not the case for everyone. So I feel that is actually one thing that might not solely assist individuals which are placing out rather a lot of experiences to be extra environment friendly, however perhaps individuals whose sturdy swimsuit is not that writing course of to assist them be a bit extra fluid of their experiences.

Will you simply discuss a bit bit extra about why that is a vital half of the job?

Yeah, so the significance in report writing is clearly to doc what occurred. And there’s rather a lot of instances when issues go to a felony trial, if it goes all the method that far, it may be a 12 months or extra till that lastly occurs. And you are not going to at all times bear in mind prefer it was yesterday. So the report is essential in not solely serving to you recall what occurred, however to clarify to the prosecutor, to the protection, to paint a really clear image of what occurred, all of the senses, what you are seeing, what you are smelling, what you are listening to, as a result of that is all an element of it. So it is necessary to have all these little particulars, but in addition not be so wordy that anyone wants to put it down for a day after which come again to it to end your report. So sort of utilizing necessary phrases and impactful phrases in a extra condensed method.

That appears like a very necessary level, like whether or not you employ the AI or you do not, you are still accountable to that report. You could also be requested questions on the report in courtroom.

Correct. And the report is your refresher. If you’ve gotten to testify in courtroom, you aren’t getting to sit up there and browse your report. So you continue to have to rise up there and discuss what occurred out of your reminiscence. But then you’ve gotten that report to take a look at to refresh your self.

Police experiences are like the lifeblood of the felony justice system.

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a regulation professor and a former protection legal professional, so he is aware of rather a lot about the position of the police report in the felony justice system.

‘The police report may be the solely memorialization of a specific incident. It may be the cause and the method {that a} prosecutor decides to paper a case, take a case ahead, and maintain charging it. It may be the doc {that a} choose appears at to determine whether or not or not a person must be held with out bond till the subsequent listening to. It is the doc the protection legal professionals get once they get the case to work out what has occurred. And in low-stage misdemeanor circumstances, even low-stage felonies, it may be the solely documentation you’ve gotten. There won’t be some like different investigation that occurs in a low-stage misdemeanor. It may be truly restricted to what’s put into these police experiences and memorialized at that first occasion.

‘In his tutorial profession, Andrew has centered on know-how in policing. And proper now, he is actually excited about how AI is being utilized by police departments. One of these functions is facial recognition. That’s when cops feed the picture of an unknown face into an algorithm that compares it in opposition to a big database of mugshots or driver’s license pictures to attempt to establish a suspect. You could have seen information protection about when this course of has gone fallacious. Like in 2023, when Detroit police falsely arrested Porcha Woodruff after AI software program returned her photograph as a possible suspect for a carjacking and theft. She was eight months pregnant at the time, and police arrested her regardless of the incontrovertible fact that nothing in the surveillance photographs or eyewitness statements indicated {that a} pregnant girl was concerned. The prosecutor dismissed the case a month later. So these facial recognition techniques have understandably gotten rather a lot of public consideration. But when it comes to AI-drafted police experiences, Andrew thinks not many individuals are conscious of this know-how exterior of regulation enforcement and authorized circles.

‘I do not assume the common public is essentially paying consideration. I positively, when I’ve talked about, oh, I simply wrote this text on AI-assisted police experiences, they’re like, oh my gosh, that is such an interesting thought. I’ve by no means heard of that.

‘In a regulation evaluate article Andrew wrote about AI-assisted police experiences, he laid out what he sees as some of the potential considerations with the know-how, beginning with the way it’s skilled.

You have to design the system, you’ve gotten to prepare the fashions, and there may be errors or biases in the fashions of how you are going to get the predictive textual content to work. Remember, all that is occurring with a big language mannequin like ChatGPT4 is it’s a predictive textual content thought. And clearly, relying on the way you construct the mannequin, it’s possible you’ll do this accurately; you’ll have errors.

‘He identified that there may very well be errors in the transcription of the physique cam audio that might make their method into an AI-generated draft report, particularly if the particular person being recorded makes use of slang the AI is not acquainted with or speaks in an accent that it hasn’t been skilled to acknowledge.

The transcript that you just get, which turns into a police report, may be crammed with like misunderstandings as a result of the algorithm did not perceive like a Southern accent.

In current weeks, Axon has rolled out the skill for Draft One to create experiences from physique cam footage with each English and Spanish audio, and to translate the Spanish particulars into English. Andrew says there’s additionally a priority about potential omissions, something that will not present up in a transcript. Think nonverbal cues, like if an individual nodded however did not say sure or no out loud.

What the audio would not choose up may very well be crucial in a case, and it is solely choosing up the audio. It’s not even seeing the video though now we have the video.

And then there is a query of hallucinations. That’s when AI interjects incorrect or deceptive particulars seemingly out of nowhere. From the reporting I’ve achieved on AI, all of these considerations sound acquainted to me. We know that whereas the accuracy of AI has superior quickly, it is fallible. It makes errors; it typically hallucinates. It may take up the biases and blind spots of no matter knowledge it is skilled on. I do know from Andrew and the officers I spoke with in Fort Collins why correct, thorough police experiences are important to the felony justice course of. So I wished to know — what’s Axon doing to stop errors from ending up in these experiences? We’ll dig into that after a break.

We attempt to view ourselves as the preeminent know-how firm in public security. We deliver disruptive applied sciences into the market. The market’s historically been underserved by know-how. And so we see the alternative there, not solely to have an effect, however actually to save lives.

‘Josh Isner is the president at Axon. He’s labored at Axon since 2009 when the firm was nonetheless referred to as Taser International. That’s how Axon received began, making so-referred to as much less deadly protection weapons for police departments. The title was modified in 2017 to Axon, the title of their line of physique cameras. Josh and I spoke when he was in New York earlier this 12 months. How do you go from being a Taser firm to an AI firm? Will you simply type of discuss the genesis of this product?

Yeah, it was onerous. It was actually onerous. It’s a narrative of sort of one factor main to one other. So there have been questions on how tasers have been being utilized in the area. So the subsequent logical step was to put a digital camera on the taser. That began to work, and we mentioned, properly, police use rather a lot of differing types of drive, not simply tasers. Let’s put the physique digital camera on the officer as an alternative. That led to a much bigger sort of downside slash alternative the place police have been producing extra digital proof than they ever had earlier than, they usually have been making an attempt to handle it on premise. So we got here out with Evidence.com, which is our cloud platform for managing digital proof. Currently in the present day, we handle 40 instances as a lot video as the Netflix library.

That’s proper, he says there’s 40 instances as a lot video as the Netflix library. Even if that is the first time you are listening to of the firm, there is a excessive chance Axon merchandise are utilized in your neighborhood. Their shoppers vary from the NYPD to small city police departments throughout the nation.

In the United States, I feel it is protected to say that nearly each single division makes use of an Axon product, whether or not it is a taser or physique digital camera. There are 18,000 departments, and I’d say excessive 17,000s use one thing from us. So I do not assume we have introduced the precise adoption or income numbers, however I’ll say Draft One is our quickest rising product that we have ever introduced to market, which is a reasonably loopy factor 30 years into the firm’s life cycle.

Josh declined to give us a quantity of what number of police departments are presently utilizing Draft One. But, based mostly on his estimate of Axon’s present buyer base, it is clear the potential progress for the product is excessive. That’s as a result of it is constructed to work with the current merchandise, like physique cams and that departments are already utilizing. Say I’m a police officer, and I’ve simply been out on a name, and now I need Draft One to assist me write my police report. What do I do? How does it work?

Yeah, the cop will get a name for service. There’ll be a physique digital camera video and audio transcript. The audio transcript is uploaded to the cloud as is the video. That’s when our AI begins to analyze that transcript. And then as quickly as you hit generate report, you may begin to see it. If you have ever used the Chat GPT, app and also you simply see the textual content populating in the app, that is the same expertise to what you see on Evidence.com. And from there, you realize, it highlights some of the areas the place you want to fill in as a result of it actually does have to be the officer’s personal report at the finish of the day, they usually have to log off as to what occurred. So it is crucial that there is a evaluate course of in place, however from there it is submitted to the supervisor for approval, after which it makes its method by the authorized course of over to the prosecutors and protection attorneys and courts and so forth.

‘And is that this based mostly on a mainstream AI mannequin, or is that this one thing that Axon in-built-home, or skilled additional? What’s the type of backend seem like?

Sure, so Draft One is Chat GPT based mostly. From there we undergo a reasonably strenuous course of earlier than it hits the market, and rather a lot of that’s testing with our Ethics and Equity Advisory Council, or we name the EEAC. And this group, we have labored with them now for 3 or 4 years, they usually signify the voices that aren’t typically in the room once we’re creating police know-how. They’re typically a bit extra skeptical. Their life experiences are rather a lot totally different than rather a lot of ours. And that truly has turn into a really priceless half of what we do as a result of they might not log off on this product, rightfully so, until we might show that it was rid of inherent biases. Especially because it pertains to race or gender, and in order that course of of calibration can take a while, and at any time when there is a new mannequin out, now we have to return by that cycle to ensure that we’re not being irresponsible in any method.

Who is a component of that group? Is that impartial advisors?

Sure, image sort of main activists in rather a lot of main cities round the United States, and these people have come from totally different social organizations or have proven an curiosity in fairness and equality in policing, and, finally, you realize, when now we have various opinions in the room, that is what leads to our greatest product work, and so we’re actually proud of this partnership.

Axon lists members of that council on its web site. It additionally lays out a set of guiding ideas it follows when creating new tech merchandise. Since the firm handles felony justice info, it has what’s referred to as a Criminal Justice Information Services Certification, which is issued by the FBI. Axon says that certification strictly prohibits them, and Microsoft and AI companions like OpenAI, from utilizing the knowledge collected by its software program for AI coaching until they get specific permission from police departments. All these questions on the privateness, accuracy and fairness issues concerned in utilizing these instruments impression extra than simply police departments. The know-how has broader ramifications in the felony justice system. What sorts of questions have you ever gotten from the type of downstream elements of the course of, from the prosecutors, from the judges. Like are there questions on how legit that is?

‘Yeah, certain. Right, you realize, proper off the bat, there was rather a lot of skepticism. And then what occurred is these prosecutors noticed the high quality of these experiences. It wasn’t a profitable argument to the prosecutor that like, oh, they’ll do these experiences quicker now on this police division. But then they noticed the high quality, they usually’re, like, holy cow, that is so constant. And, you realize, they went and watched the physique digital camera video and cross-referenced the report. And all of a sudden they’re like, man, that is one thing that is going to make our job simpler as a prosecutor.

‘Josh instructed me he is acquired largely optimistic suggestions from prosecutors. But there’s been not less than one case up to now of a prosecutor’s workplace saying they won’t settle for experiences written with the assist of AI. Last September, the prosecutor’s workplace in King County, Washington, despatched a message to police chiefs after native regulation enforcement businesses expressed curiosity in utilizing Draft One. In the e-mail, the workplace mentioned it will, quote, “not accept any police report narratives that have been produced with the assistance of AI.” It shared considerations that Draft One might, quote, “likely result in many of your officers approving Axon-drafted narratives with unintentional errors in them.” We checked in with the King County Prosecutor’s Office on this, they usually confirmed that the workplace’s place hasn’t modified since they despatched out that memo. We additionally requested Axon about this. A spokesperson mentioned that they’re, quote, “committed to continuous collaboration with police agencies, prosecutors, defense attorneys, community advocates, and other stakeholders to gather input and guide the responsible evolution of Draft One.” The spokesperson additionally mentioned that report narratives are, quote, “drafted strictly from the audio transcript from the body-worn camera recording, and Axon calibrated the underlying model for Draft One to minimize speculation or embellishments.” One of the key options that Axon says may also help stop unintended AI errors is the fill-in-the-blank prompts which are included in every draft report. They’re supposed to make sure that officers learn by and edit the experiences earlier than submitting them as remaining. Josh defined what some of these prompts are.

Maybe the particular person’s title, perhaps something on their ID that received missed if the digital camera high quality wasn’t good or if the particular person did not say it out loud. So there are issues like that, license plates, any extra commentary on what occurred, why an officer perceived one thing and acted the method they did. But these are typically the issues that they’d fill in the blanks on.

And if I’m a defendant in a case the place Draft One has been used to write the police report, is that one thing that the police division discloses, like will I or my defender know that?

‘I’d assume so. I do not know that for sure, however I feel rather a lot of instances when an officer is being cross-examined for what she or he wrote in the report, it does come out like, hey, we used a 3rd-social gathering service to write the first draft of this, and the prosecutors are actually conscious. The protection attorneys are actually conscious. So it is no secret. We don’t need it to be a secret. We need this to be about, hey, we’re making these extra factual, greater high quality, and extra environment friendly and, finally, that ought to serve everybody. The reality is admittedly what we’re after, and we predict we’re able to present a really clear image of that utilizing merchandise like this.

In Fort Collins, Sergeant Bob Younger led the cost of adopting Draft Pne. He mentioned he was bought on it fairly shortly after seeing a demo in early 2024. And as the division’s know-how sergeant, it was up to him to get others on board.

‘So now we have heaps of stakeholders. First and foremost, I feel our officers are tremendous necessary. We want to get their suggestions on it. But then now we have judges. We have district attorneys. We have protection counsel. We have residents. And all of these stakeholders want to have a say, proper? They want the similar expertise that I had once I first tried it in understanding the way it works and seeing the way it works. And there’s at all times going to be pushback from some individuals right here and there. But I feel over time, as they see increasingly, the development of AI know-how, the increasingly in style and generally it is being utilized in our day-to-day lives, they’re recognizing that, if achieved proper and achieved responsibly, it is a very highly effective software that may assist us. You know, once I made my first presentation in the DA’s workplace, there have been just a few onerous questions in there, like, you realize, one of their considerations is, properly, I do not need it spitting out a report after which copying and pasting it. Well, no, it takes human intervention and interplay. I can not simply copy the report over. It requires me to go in and make adjustments and alterations, repair phrases, take away bracketed terminology the place it is asking for clarification and so forth. So it takes human interplay, primary. And quantity two, it was actually necessary for me for our prosecutors to acknowledge that, you realize, individuals ask, like, what are you fearful of as a cop, are you anxious about getting in a shootout and stuff? Sure, that is at all times in the again of your thoughts. What an officer is anxious about is being critiqued or held answerable for an error or doing one thing and being inaccurate and never articulating accurately. And so officers are tremendous hyper centered on the high quality and amount of their work. When I’m producing a report, I’m checking it that total time for accuracy. I’m checking to be certain it is articulating all the pieces that I did and noticed and smelled and heard. And with out that interplay with that draft report, it isn’t my report. That’s Draft One’s report. It’s not my report till I contact it, get my arms on it, make these adjustments, after which put it into our information administration system after I’ve accredited it. And then it goes on to different approval steps past me.

‘What occurs to that first draft, simply the AI-generated report? Is that saved? Is that, like, might you return and reference what did the AI say versus what did the officer add?

It’s gone, it is gone. So as quickly as the officer both closes out that window or copies and pastes it, that is gone. It’s not saved on any servers. I can not see it, I can not see it in an audit path. I can not pull it again up and go, oh properly, let me see what Axon Draft One created versus what the officer created. It would not occur.

‘We adopted up with Axon on this, they usually confirmed that that is the case not only for Fort Collins, however for any division that makes use of Draft One. That unique AI-generated draft with its fill-in-the-blank prompts is not retained anyplace, which the firm says is designed to mimic the outdated-college course of the place solely remaining experiences, not drafts, are saved. If I’m a sufferer of against the law who desires a replica of the police report, or if I’ve been accused of against the law, and we’re in courtroom, and the police report comes up, will I do know that AI was concerned in drafting the report?

Awesome query. And from our company, no. Now, in equity, Axon does permit businesses administratively to activate a swap in the background that then will put down at the backside of the report, “Axon Draft One was used to create this report.” But that in and of itself just isn’t actually an correct assertion to me as a result of it isn’t. It was perhaps used to create the draft, however the officer did that. When somebody pushes create report with Draft One, we do not understand how a lot, if any, of that report is used. It’s not the objective. The objective is to create that constructing block, however the officer creates the report.

‘Axon confirmed that, by default, the experiences embody a customizable disclaimer. But police departments can select to flip that characteristic off. That’s one of the ways in which police departments have leeway on how they use the know-how. Axon supplies some coaching and steering about utilizing it, together with about its safeguards and greatest practices. But it is up to the police division to determine issues like which officers can use it or whether or not it may be used for any incident or solely particular sorts of incidents. But what Axon and Fort Collins each actually emphasised have been these fill-in-the-blank prompts that direct officers to edit the AI-generated report. It’s the stopgap for any errors made by the AI. Until an officer both fills them out or deletes them, that report is not remaining. And not less than in Fort Collins’ case, that is the cause they cite for not disclosing on completed experiences that AI was used to assist write them. I wished to see this course of for myself. That’s subsequent time on Terms of Service.