SPD recommended to develop policy around AI use

Debate over Seattle police use of AI for reports

Should Seattle police be using artificial intelligence to help generate non-criminal reports and other communications? That's the questions the Seattle Office of Accountability has been mulling over after an SPD employee was accused of using the technology to help write up Blue Team reports and emails.

SEATTLE - Should Seattle Police create a policy for the use of artifical intelligence to help generate non-criminal reports and other communications?

That's one of the questions that the Seattle Office of Police Accountability has been mulling over after an SPD employee was accused of using the technology to help write up "Blue Team Reports" and emails.

The backstory:

OPA reviewed the situation and, through a recent letter addressed to the chief, is recommending that SPD take action and create an AI policy for its employees.

In a letter sent to Chief Barnes, dated April 4, OPA wrote, "It was alleged that a sworn named employee used AI to draft emails and Blue Team Reports."

According to documents, Blue Team Reports are associated with use of force reporting.

The letter from OPA also states, "SPD Policy 12.040 – Department-Owned Computers, Devices, & Software1 does not provide guidance on whether or how any Department employee may use AI."

OPA's letter goes on to say, "The City of Seattle’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy asks employees to attribute authorship to GenAI when it is used, but this policy is not referenced in SPD’s Policy Manual."

OPA also found that the employee at the center of the recent AI use allegations discussed in the April 4th letter did not violate the prosecuting attorney's office.

OPA's letter states, "King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s statement on law enforcement’s use of Axon Draft One3 does not apply to this allegation because it is not a criminal case."

Some of the recommendations that OPA has suggested for SPD as it moves forward include:

* SPD should develop a policy on the use of AI for department-related purposes and consider incorporating existing city of Seattle policy on GenAI directly into SPD’s policy manual.

* If SPD is planning to adopt any AI-based software for report writing, then it should consider:

Coordinating with impacted stakeholders to discuss any concerns with the software and a proposed transparent timeline for implementation.

* Requiring employees to disclose their use of AI tools in any report where it was utilized and incorporating this directly into SPD policy.

FOX 13 reached out to OPA to see if this was the only report of AI use that it was looking into and is waiting to hear back.

A spokesperson for SPD responded to FOX 13's request for comment and said the department may have a response as early as Thursday.

Meantime, prosecutors say they've been proactive about policy at the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, sending out a memo late last year, telling law enforcement to avoid AI when writing reports for criminal cases.

"We don’t want good police work to be accidentally spoiled by a very simple and unintended error through AI," said Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

The office rolled out its policy last September.

"We need every report to be written by a human, not because we are against technology, but we want to make sure that the cases and the investigations hold up in court and that we don’t have unintended errors," said McNerthney.

The memo from the prosecuting attorney's office is listed below following an information request to the office;

"To our Law Enforcement Partners:

"Recently we have been asked by a few law enforcement agencies about our position of their proposed use of AI to help generate police reports. Some have questions about Axon’s Draft One, and others about other AI programs such as ChatGPT. The short answer is that our office will not accept any police report narratives that have been produced with the assistance of AI. All reports must be produced entirely by the authoring officer.

"There are a number of reasons why we have arrived at this conclusion. Let me first start by saying we are keenly aware of how time-consuming it is to write police narratives. We also understand that staffing levels are extremely short in some departments, and there is a real need to free up as much time as possible for officers to be on the street. We are also aware that AI is here, and is already in many products we all use every day (Google Translate, Adobe, etc.). We do not fear advances in technology – but we do have legitimate concerns about some of the products on the market now.

"In general, most products are not Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) compliant. By law, aspects of law enforcement work must remain private and are forbidden to be disseminated outside our community – separate from what is available through public disclosure. Publicly available applications like ChatGPT and others take the information submitted and then use it to learn and disseminate. That runs afoul of CJIS prohibitions.

"However, there are some products that are CJIS compliant that still pose significant concerns as to how they may negatively impact officers and any case in which these reports are used. Axon Draft One is one such product. There are a number of concerns we have raised with Axon about their product that remain unaddressed. Unfortunately, these concerns will likely result in many of your officers approving Axon-drafted narratives with unintentional errors in them. Axon relies on its technology to review body warn audio to compile a draft narrative. It does not keep a draft of what it produces or what the officer fixed/added. It alone decides what parts of the audio are unintelligible. It has "hallucinations" (errors) both large and small. It does not track its rate of errors, or how many errors an officer fixed in prior drafts. While an officer is required to edit the narrative and assert under penalty of perjury that it is accurate, some of the errors are so small that they will be missed in review. In one example we have seen, an otherwise excellent report included a reference to an officer who was not even at the scene. This is one type of error that could easily go unnoticed by a reviewing officer given the volume of material required to be reviewed on deadline. And when an officer on the stand alleges that their report is accurate – they will be proven wrong. When they then claim AI made the error, there will be no draft report to confirm that it was AI that made the error.

"For obvious reasons, we do not want your officers certifying false police reports. The consequences will be devastating for the case, the community and the officer. Furthermore, it will it subject them to Brady/PID ramifications, and leave them without a way to establish that theirs was an error of oversight, and not falsehood.

"Members of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office have met with Axon to raise these concerns and others. We also sit on a national committee of prosecutors who are working to address AI concerns – which are being raised nationwide. There will likely come a day where AI can assist our offices in important and time-saving ways. For the reasons outlined, this particular usage is not one we are ready to accept. AI continues to develop and we are hopeful that we will reach a point in the near future where these reports can be relied on. For now, our office has made the decision not to accept any police narratives that were produced with the assistance of AI. Please reach out if you have any questions at all. We are happy to discuss this further.

"Daniel J. Clark, Chief Deputy, Mainstream Criminal Division, King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office"

The Source: Information in this story is from the Seattle Office of Police Accountability, Seattle Police and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.