How AI Is Changing The Nature Of Police Reports

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, October 3, 2024…

• Draft One is software that uses basically the same AI as Chat GPT. In seconds it generates the narrative for a police officer’s report by analyzing the transcript of their body cam audio. East Palo Alto is among a handful of cities across the state including Fresno, San Mateo, Campbell and Bishop that have started testing or using the program. But some experts are questioning its accuracy.
• Flood officials are strengthening a levee system in Monterey County that burst during a storm last year, flooding nearly 300 homes in Pajaro.
• The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday on the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Reports Police Write

East Palo Alto, a small working-class city that can feel a world away from its Silicon Valley neighbors, is among a handful of California departments, including Campbell, San Mateo, Bishop and Fresno, that have started to use or test the AI-powered software developed by Axon, an industry leader in body cameras and tasers. Axon said the program can help officers produce more objective reports in less time. But as more agencies adopt these kinds of tools, some experts wonder if they give artificial intelligence too big a part in the criminal justice system.

“We forget that that 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 who wrote the first law review article on AI-assisted police reports, which he expects to publish next year.

From documenting the details of complex homicides to recording the basics of a stolen bicycle, police reports have been at the heart of police work. “They actually are kind of the building block of the criminal justice system because they are the official sort of memorialization of 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 is on this initial piece of paper.

Pajaro River Levee Project Breaks Ground As Winter Flood Concerns Loom

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

“We’re turning the page from decades of fighting for a project [to] now just a handful of years of constructing a project for a new safe and secure Pajaro Valley,” Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend said.

The nearly 14-mile levee project, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency, is expected to be finished early next decade.

Tribes Celebrate End Of The Largest Dam Removal Project In US History

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday, marking a major victory for tribes in the region who fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.

Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, local tribes showcased the environmental devastation due to the four towering hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon, which are are culturally and spiritually significant to tribes in the region. The dams cut salmon off from their historic habitat and caused them to die in alarming numbers because of bad water-quality conditions.

Without the tribes’ work “to point out the damage that these dams were doing, not only to the environment, but to the social and cultural fabric of these tribal nations, there would be no dam removal,” said Mark Bransom, chief executive of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit entity created to oversee the project.