Comment by Workaccount2

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.

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.

I cannot imagine a defense so incompetent that they rely on the police report rather than watching the entire body cam footage and doing their own assessment.

Not incompetent at all. Police officers often turn in multiple reports following an incident and arrest. Sometimes they contradict each other, and it would be a foolish defense attorney who did not explore those contradictions.

Even in jurisdictions that require recordings at all times, there are times when the police are required by law to switch them off (entering certain non-public spaces etc), so there can always be gaps that are legal, never mind illegal.

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