How AI is changing the nature of police reports

Here are the top stories of the morning of Thursday, October 3, 2024…

East Palo Alto, a small blue-collar town that feels like a world apart from its Silicon Valley neighbors, is among a handful of California agencies, including Campbell, San Mateo, Bishop and Fresno, that have begun using or testing AI. Powered software developed by Axon, an industry leader in body cameras and Tasers. Axon said the program can help officials produce more objective reports in less time. But as more agencies adopt these types of tools, some experts are wondering whether they are giving artificial intelligence too big of a role in the criminal justice system.

“We forget that this document plays a really central role in decisions that change people’s lives,” said Andrew Ferguson, a criminal law professor at American University Washington College of Law and author of the first legal review Article on AI-powered police reports, which he expects to release next year.

From documenting the details of complex homicides to gathering the nuts and bolts of a stolen bicycle, police reports have been at the heart of police work. “They are actually kind of a building block of the criminal justice system because they are the official way of remembering what happened, when and sometimes why,” Ferguson said. Prosecutors make charging decisions, judges make bail decisions, and people make decisions about their own defense based, at least in part, on what’s written on that first piece of paper.

More than a year and a half after the Pajaro River levee burst, flooding nearly 300 homes in Monterey County with chocolate-milk water, flood officials broke ground Wednesday on a massive levee project to protect the river valley from future storms.