Axon's Draft One AI Police Report Generator Is Designed to Defy Transparency

‘In passing by the side of Mount Thai, Confucius came on a woman who was weeping bitterly by a grave. The Master pressed forward and drove quickly to her; then he sent Tze-lu to question her. “Your wailing,” said he, “is that of one who has suffered sorrow on sorrow.”She replied, “That is so. Once my husband’s father was killed here by a tiger. My husband was also killed, and now my son has died in the same way.” The Master said, “Why do you not leave the place?” The answer was, “There is no oppressive government here.” The Master then said, “Remember this, my children: oppressive government is more terrible than tigers.”’

The subject of this paper is the problem of ensuring that government shall be less terrible than tigers.

--- From The Taming of Power by Bertrand Russell, 1938

> I dont want to worry about a white van pulling up in front of my house because I said something sarcastic online.

I find it fascinating that people will genuinely worry about this happening to them, despite it not happening, and then openly prefer a place they describe as “a lil dangerous” and “a degree of lawlessness”

This is the kind of thinking that happens when you build your entire worldview around exaggerated headlines and online fear mongering. When you go somewhere that isn’t in the headlines all of the time, you have to build your worldview around what you see and the vibes you sense instead of the fear mongering headlines. When a place described with words like dangerous and lawless starts to sound like the safer alternative than a country that is demonstrably safer, you’re probably getting too much of your information from internet sources designed to trigger your senses of fear and rage for engagement.

Every time there’s an anecdote with cognitive dissonance like this (describing the lawless, “lil dangerous” place as feeling safer) it comes down to getting perceptions of one community through vibes and the other community through news headlines. In this case, the description of the US as a technocratic police state where people get thrown into a white van for sarcastic online comments versus seeing some cops at a local bar one time.

Come on over to the Dominican Republic. I’ve been here for 15 years, and I’ve had no problems running several projects from here. In the Cibao region you’ll find IMHO the best culture, and Santiago has a little of everything, though it takes some looking to find the gems. I prefer the mountains between Santiago and Puerto Plata, close to everything but not in the middle of anything. Above 1000m elevation the weather is cool nights, warm days.

If you get here HMU if you want to talk about the third industrial revolution and what we’re working on to make it a better ride for humans.

Law enforcement needs greater accountability altogether.

I’ve long believed that police officers should be required to carry private liability insurance, just like professionals in many other high risk fields. If an officer is uninsurable, they should be unhireable, plain and simple. Repeated misconduct would drive up their premiums or disqualify them entirely, creating a real consequence for bad behavior.

It’s astonishing that police officers aren’t held to the same standards as the rest of us. As a carpenter and building contractor, if I showed up at the wrong address and built or tore down something by mistake, I’d be financially and legally responsible. I’d be expected to make it right, and my insurance would likely step in.

But when a police officer raids the wrong home, injures or kills innocent people, or throws tear gas into a room with a baby, there’s rarely accountability—legal, financial, or professional. That’s unacceptable in any system that claims to serve and protect the public.

That’s really just one issue among many, and it actually makes me worry more about this technology, not less: it provides a clear incentive for the officer to stand by the contents of a report that he or she did not write, even if they realize at some point it is wrong, because they hastily or lazily signed it.

The way this technology is designed is a clear example of dystopian outcomes driven by market forces: capitalism inserted into processes (like justice) which society ought to protect against perversion by profit motives. I can imagine a version of this technology that is designed with societal benefits in mind, but instead we get one designed to make the sale.

Yeah the avoidance of record keeping to reduce disclosure smacks of the policies that got Google into hot water recently: https://www.epspros.com/news-resources/news/2024/google-accu...

I was thinking the same thing. If the AI report depends on the raw audio, then it should be preserved and the defense should compare that to the final police report. Having the edit history would be useful for improving the software and analyzing the officer's motivations, but ultimately we're not in a worse situation than before.

I'd predict the synthesis of the AI transcript and the police officer's memory will be more accurate than just the police officer alone. Would be nice if there's an independent study.

There are very incompetent public defenders, if we attribute to incompetence instead of malice, AI isn't changing that.

The current administration has already removed the requirement for federal police forces to wear body cameras. As well as made statements (but little action so far) to federalize the police force to be under the jurisdiction of the DOJ. Everything being recorded may not be the case very soon. Sorry, I’d get sources but I just woke up, I’ll edit this later with them.

It goes a lot deeper than this, the real world isn't as simple as 'objective truth' and much of the law relies on interpreting the facts we all seek. This is where this technology fails, it normalizes nudging the margins to include a framing of what happened (including that video) using particular and precise language. That language influences court decisions.

For example, the phrase 'furtive movements' seems really anochronistic. Is that a phrase you use? cops use in their day to day life? But it constantly shows up in police reports. Why? The courts have said that 'furtive' movements are suspicious enough to trigger probable cause - which justifies a search. So now, cops every where write that they observe movements that are furtive. Is what your attorney viewed furtive? where they normal movements? were they suspicious? The cop described them as furtive though and we defer to cops, in part because they speak the language of the courts, and now your arrest is valid and that search is valid and whatever is recovered is valid - because a court said movements need to be furtive and you sneezed and a cop described that as furtive even though he had already decided to do the search before he got out of his car.

The only way our system works is if at every level every participant (people, jurors, judges, politicians) distrust the words of police - especially when they habitually use the language of the law to justify their actions. What this tool does is quite the opposite, it will statistically normalize the words police use to describe every interaction in language that is meant to persuade and influence courts now and over time to defer to police.

https://www.bjjohnsonlaw.com/furtive-movements-and-fourth-am...

https://www.californialawreview.org/print/whack-a-mole-sus

I can only assume you meant to write "shouldn't" instead of "should", but if you study human factors you'll discover that certain kinds of taking-shortcuts behavior are inevitable when dealing with humans. Speeding when we drive, for example. We know we are creating a material risk of getting pulled over and fined, but we just basically decide to ignore that risk because for most of us it is outweighed by the convenience (and real value) of getting everywhere we're going faster.

As always considering how a person would interact with an intern is surprisingly instructive to how they will form a working relationship with an non-sentient tool like a language model. You would expect them to give it a probationary experience to earn their trust after which if they are satisfied they will almost certainly express that trust by giving the tool a greater and greater degree of freedom with less active (and less critical) oversight.

It is not the initial state that worries me where the officers still mistrust a new technology and are vigilant of it. What worries me is the late-stage where they have learned to trust it (because it has learned to cover their asses correctly) and the AI itself actually ends up exercising power in human social structures because people have a surprising bias towards not speaking up when it would be safer to keep your head down and go with the flow, even when the flow is letting AI take operational control of society inch by inch

Do you read EULAs all the way through every time?

People just LGTM rubber stamp nearly everything they're given, as it's time efficient in the now.

From TFA, “ You can read our full report, which details what we found in those documents, how we filed those public records requests, and how you can file your own, here.” With the last word here being a link to another article:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/effs-guide-getting-rec...

If so, it'd definitely be FOIA'able.

This may be news to some, but many departments already hire officers that are borderline illiterate. It’s especially true here in the south.

My mother enjoyed a ~30 year career in law enforcement while being able to read at a junior high level. And that’s being generous.

Of course that’s just one anecdote, but just spend some time with deputies in rural Alabama and you’ll see what I mean.

> could start highering illiterate officers

I love this mistake.

No doubt.

I was watching one of those youtube bodycam videos of an accident scene where one of the cars ended up in a gas station. Police show up and it's chaos -- victims on the ground needing medical attention, witnesses helping (or not) said accident victims, police not knowing who was in what car, &etc.

In the midst of all this (when it calmed down enough for the police to get a handle on the scene) they tried to identify someone who didn't want to be involved and promptly cuffed them and threw them in the back of a squad car for "being uncooperative". One of the other witnesses, having seen this, decided that person was the missing driver of the other car and told this to the police with all sorts of confidence.

Now the police have a 'suspect' to concentrate on because anyone 'acting squirrelly' must have something to hide as it's totally inconceivable to them someone might just not want to participate in their investigation. Luckily this poor, traumatized kid was able to 'prove' they weren't involved before spending who knows how much time behind bars based on 'credible' eye-witness testimony.

These audio-only AI generated reports should be all kinds of accurate now that police are trained to say 'quit resisting' anytime there's any level of force involved specifically for the body cams...

Are you talking about Judge Fleischer in Texas?

I do enjoy seeing those (well, I shouldn't).

The prosecutors are given the most absolute trash reports to work with. "Failure to ID, after a traffic stop." "What was the stop for?" "It doesn't say." "So no PC for the stop."

"A caller and said she thought someone was stealing their neighbor's U Haul. A man was observed walking on that street and taken into custody for ..." "For what? Walking while black?"

But no sympathy for the prosecutors either. Garbage reports, but they obviously don't read them pre-hearing, and have plainly become accustomed to judges rubber stamping their PC hearings.

I do like that he doesn't go 'lightly' with the defendants. "You got off lucky this time. You know it, I know it. Do better or it might not go the same next time", and when there is PC or other such, he doesn't put up with any bullshit either.

More judges like him are needed.

the most interesting idea so far.

What Axon's product should be: Define "best" police report, and assist the officer to write that.

What it is: Axon makes whatever police departments ask for.

It doesn't have to be a big conspiracy. It's not incompetence either. Hanlon's Razer should really be, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by" the enterprise sales pipeline.

Enterprise sales is why we are talking about Axon and not far older, detailed, thoughtful efforts from all sorts of other organizations.