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As someone who has read thousands of police reports, I'm of mixed thoughts about this. Obviously we have this current problem of AI hallucinations. Generally p

As someone who has read thousands of police reports, I'm of mixed thoughts about this. Obviously we have this current problem of AI hallucinations. Generally police reports are very poor. Police don't want to write them. They are usually incredibly short, incredibly vague, and always written to fit the narrative the officer is trying to present. What happens is that there is usually a substantial delay between arrest and trial, so the officer will have forgotten the incident by that point (he has had 1000 other crimes to tackle). Day of trial the prosecutor will call the police to their office in the morning and get them to read the report and "refresh" their memory. We know how human memory is. On the one hand, writing a comprehensive report using bodycam footage might improve the quality and veracity of the reports, and potentially cut down on improper charges and improper convictions. But, it will (a) make police totally lazy about reports, and (b) sometimes either hallucinate, or mischaracterize an interaction that an actual human would understand differently. They definitely need to be flagged though.

soup10 2y ago
I would rather have an AI write the incident reports, I trust AI more than I trust police to be objective.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  This is a false setup; you don't need to trust either. I'd prefer a law that makes the bodycam footage public & accessible by default. It could even be automated with geo-tagging where & when the recording happened.
  - daeken 2y ago
    The fact that police cars can start without the body cams being fully charged, the fact that they don't stream to a centralized and reliable server 100% of the time that they're worn, and the fact that they're possible to turn off while an officer is on duty with effectively zero consequences makes it pretty clear that no one in power cares about bodycams being a tool for the people. They're just weaponized against the populace.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Police get called to a lot of very nasty calls, and see a lot of things that people calling would really rather not be public by default. Naked people at 2am who just ran a robber off (or are on drugs), domestic violence calls, child abuse calls, welfare checks where people are definitely not okay - and sometimes where people have been rotting for days or weeks in the heat. Not to mention traffic accidents and crimes with decapitations, dead kids, dead pregnant women, and numerous combinations of the above. Also, cops need to use the toilet too. And need to talk to people that don’t want others to know they are talking to the cops. They already get geotagged. I’m not saying body cam footage should be inaccessible if there is a legitimate reason, but the public is very quickly going to be unhappy if their law enforcement agency posts all their body cam footage on the Internet - or allows anyone else to do the same.
nico 2y ago
Could the writing process be replaced by a recorded conversation instead? Talk to an AI, answer their questions, the convo is recorded and then they can access both the recording and transcript before trial
- qingcharles 2y ago
  This actually seems like a good idea. The AI would be good at listening and presenting open-ended questions to get more detail out of the officer. It could dig in to parts of the story where it thinks more information is needed.
- magnetowasright 2y ago
  I don't think that's going to stop memory faltering, or motives/attitudes toward this work, or meaningfully reduce the work required
skeeter2020 2y ago
I don't see your scenario as really valid, as we still have mountains of bodycam footage & audio, and AI could be used to supplement or validate human reports. I really like the use of video, axon's tools and even AI to be available when needed, but do not like the idea of AI being used as the primary interpreter and source of truth record.
- lazide 2y ago
  The issue is that AI trying to supplement or validate anything is going to just hallucinate stuff a decent percentage of the time, and the folks will probably just roll with it instead of validate it as long as it agrees with what the prosecution wants - unless the defendant has good lawyers. So it would just make the situation worse.
therealpygon 2y ago
And that is the problem. Those officers who barely remember the incident’s details use those reports to “refresh” their memory, and then testify to these details that they no longer recall as “facts”. Given that a police report is effectively testimony, why would anyone consider allowing AI written reports as facts/evidence? I would rather a poorly written accurate report of what was witnessed by an officer, over an AI written report that “resembles” the facts witnessed.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Yeah, it's literally adding noise to a report to make it longer, while also encouraging falsified memories inside the officers. As an absolute bare minimum, all the initial data that was fed into the LLM needs to be preserved for the lifetime of the generated report and available to defense counsel.

soup10 2y ago

I would rather have an AI write the incident reports, I trust AI more than I trust police to be objective.

skeeter2020 2y ago
This is a false setup; you don't need to trust either. I'd prefer a law that makes the bodycam footage public & accessible by default. It could even be automated with geo-tagging where & when the recording happened.
- daeken 2y ago
  The fact that police cars can start without the body cams being fully charged, the fact that they don't stream to a centralized and reliable server 100% of the time that they're worn, and the fact that they're possible to turn off while an officer is on duty with effectively zero consequences makes it pretty clear that no one in power cares about bodycams being a tool for the people. They're just weaponized against the populace.
- lazide 2y ago
  Police get called to a lot of very nasty calls, and see a lot of things that people calling would really rather not be public by default. Naked people at 2am who just ran a robber off (or are on drugs), domestic violence calls, child abuse calls, welfare checks where people are definitely not okay - and sometimes where people have been rotting for days or weeks in the heat. Not to mention traffic accidents and crimes with decapitations, dead kids, dead pregnant women, and numerous combinations of the above. Also, cops need to use the toilet too. And need to talk to people that don’t want others to know they are talking to the cops. They already get geotagged. I’m not saying body cam footage should be inaccessible if there is a legitimate reason, but the public is very quickly going to be unhappy if their law enforcement agency posts all their body cam footage on the Internet - or allows anyone else to do the same.

nico 2y ago

Could the writing process be replaced by a recorded conversation instead? Talk to an AI, answer their questions, the convo is recorded and then they can access both the recording and transcript before trial

qingcharles 2y ago
This actually seems like a good idea. The AI would be good at listening and presenting open-ended questions to get more detail out of the officer. It could dig in to parts of the story where it thinks more information is needed.
magnetowasright 2y ago
I don't think that's going to stop memory faltering, or motives/attitudes toward this work, or meaningfully reduce the work required

skeeter2020 2y ago

I don't see your scenario as really valid, as we still have mountains of bodycam footage & audio, and AI could be used to supplement or validate human reports. I really like the use of video, axon's tools and even AI to be available when needed, but do not like the idea of AI being used as the primary interpreter and source of truth record.

lazide 2y ago
The issue is that AI trying to supplement or validate anything is going to just hallucinate stuff a decent percentage of the time, and the folks will probably just roll with it instead of validate it as long as it agrees with what the prosecution wants - unless the defendant has good lawyers. So it would just make the situation worse.

therealpygon 2y ago

And that is the problem. Those officers who barely remember the incident’s details use those reports to “refresh” their memory, and then testify to these details that they no longer recall as “facts”. Given that a police report is effectively testimony, why would anyone consider allowing AI written reports as facts/evidence? I would rather a poorly written accurate report of what was witnessed by an officer, over an AI written report that “resembles” the facts witnessed.

Terr_ 2y ago
Yeah, it's literally adding noise to a report to make it longer, while also encouraging falsified memories inside the officers. As an absolute bare minimum, all the initial data that was fed into the LLM needs to be preserved for the lifetime of the generated report and available to defense counsel.