A new bill would limit the use of artificial intelligence for Utah law enforcement officials, revealing a rift between some departments in the state on the use of the technology.
The legislation, SB180, introduced by Sen. Stephanie Pitcher, D-Salt Lake, would require that a human review any AI-generated police reports, and that any law enforcement agency using generative AI include a disclosure in the report. “We’re seeing more of a reliance on artificial intelligence,” Pitcher said in a Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee hearing last week where she presented the bill.
Pitcher, an attorney and former prosecutor, told the committee she started thinking about the bill last summer and, at the time, was not aware of any departments in the state using the technology but learned in the months since that a number of agencies in the state are using an AI program known as Axon Draft One, which uses body camera footage to generate police reports.
“At the time, I felt like it was something that it’s better for us to get ahead of instead of playing catch up on,” she said in an interview. “Using AI to generate police reports — or just in the investigation process — presents a number of really interesting issues, I think, where some guardrails are appropriate.”
Several police departments in Utah confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune that they use or have tested the use of generative AI technology for developing reports.
A spokesperson for the Provo Police Department said they had just recently finished an Axon Draft One trial, and a spokespeople for the West Jordan and South Jordan Police Departments said they continue to use the technology. A spokesperson for the Salt Lake City Police Department said in an email to The Tribune that the agency has “explored generative AI technology for police report writing in the past” but does not currently use any.
”My understanding is that it was incredibly useful, that it saved a significant amount of time, and was very helpful for getting them back out to the community much quicker,” Sergeant Andrew Hercules of West Jordan Police Department told The Tribune. Janna-Lee Holland, the public information officer for the Provo Police, shared a similar sentiment, writing in an email, “The officers who participated in the trial reported that the program saved them a lot of time, freeing them up for more proactive work.”
The Provo, South Jordan and West Jordan police agencies all said they had policies for the use of AI that largely aligned with what Pitcher’s bill would require across the state, including disclosure that AI was used in the generation of the report and officer review of any report the AI produces.
“[A]n officer must read and make edits to the report (at least 10% must be added by the officer), as well as remove deliberately entered ‘errors’ as an additional acknowledgment before the report can be finalized,” Holland said in an email. Reports also require a signed acknowledgment that it has been reviewed for accuracy and AI generated data is not saved directly in the AI generator.
However, other law enforcement officers expressed concern with the use of any AI technology for generating reports.
“Personally and professionally speaking, I’ve [been] in law enforcement for 20 years and the idea of submitting a report that was not fully written by myself for a criminal case concerns me,” Sergeant Raymond Ormond of the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said in an email. “I want to know and have typed every letter of every word in that report so I can testify that my report is that, my report. AI can be a very useful tool but I don’t think it’s meant for everything.”
Ormond also said it was his understanding that any project using AI technology would need to be approved by the county and could not include the use of any sensitive personal or identifying information. “Based on that,” he wrote, “using AI for a police report would not be approved and is not allowed.”
Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, a Provo police officer, said he is personally skeptical of the use of AI generally and described himself as “like Will Smith in ‘I, Robot’” — a movie where Smith plays a detective skeptical of robots in law enforcement. Clancy said he did not use the Axon Draft One technology during the city’s trial run for that reason. “I like when humans are in charge,” he said in an interview. “I certainly err more on the side of let’s make sure we’re not offsetting our criminal justice system to this kind of still-developing technology.”
He does acknowledge that some of his colleagues like the help of AI and said he did not notice a dip in the quality of reports while the department tested the tool. He also said he thinks legislation like Pitcher’s is valuable and codifies best practices for officers.
“What Senator Pitcher is asking us to do is not difficult,” he said. But, he added, “There’s no substitute for hard work, studying and the human heart. You can’t replicate that. I don’t think technology will ever get to that point.”
Ready or not, criminal defense attorney Mark Moffat said, the use of AI for police reports is just the beginning of a coming wave of generative technology in the justice system.
“We could see AI being used to generate basically a scene reconstruction,” Moffat said in an interview. “We need to have a check on the use of this stuff, because with AI, these once crude methods have now morphed into very, very real-looking and believable reconstructions that we think could be used detrimentally in court.”
The initial version of Pitcher’s bill included a requirement that, as part of their AI policies, law enforcement agencies have clear disciplinary sanctions if their policies are violated, but she said in an interview that the language was tweaked after feedback from the Utah Law Enforcement Legislative Committee. The bill now requires that agencies include language in their AI policies that would say a violation “may result in administrative disciplinary action by the head of the law enforcement agency.”
The revised bill was passed through the Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee and will soon come to the Senate floor for a vote.
