The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office is researching the use of artificial intelligence to aid deputies in writing incident reports, but it isn’t something that’s going to be implemented anytime soon. 

If adopted, BCSO could be one of the first law enforcement agencies in the nation to use artificial intelligence for report writing.

“I would project the research would take at least all of 2024 and take us into 2025 before serious consideration is made,” said BCSO spokeswoman Jayme Fuller-Gonzales. 

How artificial intelligence could help 

University of New Mexico Law Professor Sonia Gipson Rankin, who has a background in computer science, said using this technology could benefit law enforcement officers because it could help systemize language. 

“If English isn’t your first language, and you have to write something that needs to be put into an official record, it can do a really great job in kind of creating a pattern of writing,” Rankin Gipson said. 

Artificial intelligence, she said, will help people formalize and improve tone and clarity and help the writer see and visualize stronger writing over time. 

“I think it’s a great tool that can be used in some of those kinds of instances or for those purposes,” she said. 

The need for human involvement  

However, she said, there are some ways that using AI for report writing could be tricky. Artificial Intelligence can change language, so if a law enforcement officer is collecting witness accounts for an official record, AI could change a word or a term, Gipson Rankin said. 

For example if law enforcement officers are responding to the scene of a car crash, and a witness tells police that two cars bumped into each other, AI could change the terms. Bumped into is different than smashed into, which is different than collided with, which is different then hit. 

“If a witness says one term in particular, and law enforcement interprets it a different way, and the AI interprets it a third way, we might lose some of the full continuity or connection, or understanding of what the original witness actually says they said,” she said. 

That already happens all the time though, Gipson Rankin said. 

“A witness can be very excited and utter, ‘oh my goodness, they just crashed into each other,’ when the cars were going five miles an hour,” she said. 

If AI is implemented in this manner at BCSO, Gipson Rankin said the deputies are going to have to be mindful of that and there will have to be human involvement  of AI generated police reports. 

Careful training needed

The use of AI in police report writing, Gipson Rankin said, requires very careful training of law enforcement officers.

“To be sure to not get caught into confirmation bias, or concerns that the AI said they did it, therefore, it must be true, is going to really require continuous oversight, and a population that is going to be critical and watching for it as opposed to embracing whatever the AI said is true,” she said. 

Gipson Rankin said she is also concerned how AI will work with civilian subpopulations that may speak in a more casual or colloquial manner, or use terms that aren’t considered by the system to be English in the United States that the AI might not understand. 

The research into using AI for report writing that BCSO is doing is happening across the country. 

“I’m really looking forward to the amount of effort and oversight they will also put into making sure that the AI is serving the people and not being used as a mechanism to remove rights, or privacy, or liberties from people,” Gipson Rankin said.