San Diego looks at using AI to help officers write police reports

Earlier this year, the San Diego Police Department made headlines for a policy that prohibited officers from using artificial intelligence to produce police reports. Now the department is opening the door to doing just that.

A request for information issued by the department on July 31 said it was looking for a program “that utilizes AI technology to assist officers and investigators in writing police reports.”

“The goal of this initiative is to enhance efficiency in report writing, thereby allowing officers to respond more quickly to calls for service,” the request for information read.

It noted that the program must allow users to maintain control over the “content and structure of their reports.” It also said the request was issued “solely for information gathering and planning purposes.” The document estimated the contract value to be somewhere between $500,000 and $3 million.

In an email, San Diego police spokesperson Ashley Nicholes emphasized that the department was in an “exploration phase” to learn what technology is available and what the best practices are. Should it choose to pursue AI-assisted police report programs, the department would conduct outreach to elected officials and community members, she said.

“SDPD is constantly looking at ways to maximize efficiency throughout the department, particularly given current staffing shortages of front line officers. With the emergence of AI technology, this may be an option to reduce time spent on certain tasks to put officers back in the field responding to additional calls for service faster,” Nicholes wrote.

The Los Angeles Police Department already is utilizing AI technology and has plans to integrate it further into its crime-fighting.

It has entered into a $235-million deal with Axon that will give the department a suite of new tech — including a tool that will draft a summary of an encounter based on audio from an officer’s body camera.

During a recent L.A. Police Commission meeting, a board member expressed concern about the potential for AI to insert bias into crime reports. The LAPD’s chief information officer, Dean Gialamas, said the department was using “non-agentic” AI systems that are incapable of making decisions and executing tasks autonomously. As a safeguard, he said, officers will be required to review their reports before submitting them.

The department is also considering the widespread deployment of AI-powered software that listens to and registers 911 calls, ensuring that the most serious emergencies receive prompt attention. Department officials said that calls will still be answered by human operators and not bots.

In debating the deal with Axon, City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said that the lack of meaningful federal and state regulation of AI makes her uncomfortable; she said the LAPD and other city agencies needed to have “a broader conversation for the utilization of technology.”

The LAPD already uses other AI-assisted tools and technologies for tasks including investigating the social media accounts of crime suspects and monitoring problem officers.

Earlier this year, the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training — the state’s law enforcement accreditation body — released a model policy on the use of AI by police.

“Agency policy and practice may allow Al use to support the preparation of non-law enforcement reports, work products, memorandums, and other administrative documents, such as organizing notes, summarizing material, or improving clarity,” the model said. “It is encouraged that all Al-assisted content be reviewed and approved by a responsible human author, prior to release or submission, who must verify that the information is accurate and complete. Personnel, supervisors, and agencies remain responsible for the professional judgment, legal responsibility, and ethical accountability of the authoring employee, supervisor, or agency.”

San Diego’s request for information comes less than a year after the department had instituted a policy that, at first, seemed wholly contradictory.

In December, the San Diego Police Department forbade officers to use AI platforms to generate reports.

“The Department does not authorize the use of any generative Artificial Intelligence programs to author a police report,” read a memo first reported by the local CBS television station.

The policy came shortly before a state law went into effect that required police departments to begin developing policies regulating AI use. It also required that departments disclose whether AI was used to write reports and to hold on to any body-cam video and audio to allow for future audits.

But the San Diego Police Department’s policy came with a huge asterisk: It only prohibited officers’ use of non-department-approved AI platforms. So, what may have seemed like a blanket ban was really just a timeout, assuming the department at some point did officially approve an AI platform.

To Khalid Alexander — a professor at San Diego City College and the founder of Pillars of the Community, an organization dedicated to supporting San Diegans affected by law enforcement — the prospect seems all bad.

“It’s just one more example of them trying to take any kind of humanity away from policing,” Alexander said.

He not only worries about whether systems stuffed full of information about people on the worst days of their lives are actually secure, he said, but also about over-reliance on the technology. As an instructor, he sees students relying on AI to complete coursework — which has resulted in inaccuracies.

“The problem isn’t just that [police will] use it, it’s the assumption that the technology is less biased and more correct than human beings,” Alexander said.

A handful of local law enforcement agencies have already leaned into AI. The Chula Vista Police Department and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office utilize AI programs that transcribe residents’ non-emergency calls and route them to the appropriate place in a bid to free up dispatchers to take more emergency calls.

Chula Vista, which has wholly embraced such technologies, also utilizes AI to write police reports.

“We’re estimating usually three to five hours per shift spent on report writing,” Chula Vista Police Chief Roxana Kennedy said in November. “If that means that officer is going to get back out on the street quicker, it’s super important.”

Still, law enforcement’s usage of AI has sparked controversy. Many of those concerns have centered on the often-troubling biases programmed into AI platforms. But as AI platforms have become more integrated into everyday life, other worries have emerged, such as whether their tendency to flatter and validate users’ points of view can negatively affect police investigations.

There are examples of AI platforms bungling police-related tasks, leading to real-life consequences for innocent people, particularly when it comes to reliance on facial recognition software.

Such concerns have led to pushback against AI-enabled surveillance cameras, of which San Diego has a robust network. Last year, one local man spent nearly a month behind bars after being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit thanks to a misidentification from a Flock camera.

In Los Angeles, the City Council last week voted to delay a pilot program to attach Flock cameras to streetlights around the city — which would offer the LAPD a souped-up version of its current systems by using AI to identify vehicles, license plates, pedestrians and objects on streets and sidewalks — until officials were satisfied the technology would be wielded responsibly.

The use of AI to create police reports has been panned by some opponents and experts. Studies have found that AI can produce writing that is better, at least technically, but may not actually save officers time.

One recent study found that AI-generated police reports were “rated substantively and significantly worse on accuracy,” according to Ian Adams, a former police officer and criminology professor who ran the study.

“For a document whose downstream readers are prosecutors deciding to charge, defense attorneys probing for inconsistencies, and judges and juries reconstructing events months later, accuracy is the threshold condition,” Adams wrote on a LinkedIn post, meaning it is a minimum requirement.

Andrew Ferguson is a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in police surveillance and the effects of the integration of AI into policing. In a 2025 law review article on AI-produced police reports, he wrote “the danger for the criminal legal system is the digital poisoning of the facts in criminal trials by algorithmically altering the narrative.”

Still, Ferguson doesn’t view himself as an out-and-out critic. The current reality of human-produced police reports is far from optimal. After all, humans produce errors as well. But he does count himself as a skeptic.

“Because most of the history of police technologies has usually been one of adoption, ‘Oops, we created a problem,’ scandal, news report and then walking it back,” Ferguson said.

To him, there’s no question that AI will only become more integrated into policing. But officials and the public, he said, need to understand there are inherent dangers in “moving a very human job to a less human mechanism.”

“The question is, what human aspect are you losing — and what do you do to make sure that there aren’t real errors or problems in the technology?” Ferguson said. “We never seem to ask these hard questions before we roll out the technology.”

Jany is a Times staff writer. McWhinney writes for Voice of San Diego.

At the ground zero of the AI boom, San Francisco Bay residents grapple with the technology Oct. 9, 2026 California lawmakers urge criminal penalties, emergency legislation to rein in unchecked AI Sept. 13, 2026 California lawmakers crack down on AI used in public comment Aug. 28, 2026 Show Comments World & Nation The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.

Libor Jany covers the Los Angeles Police Department. Before joining the Los Angeles Times in 2022, he covered public safety for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. A St. Paul, Minn., native, Jany studied communications at Mississippi State University.

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