Chula Vista Becomes First in County to Embrace AI in Policing 

The Chula Vista Police Department will become the first police agency in San Diego County to incorporate artificial intelligence into officers’ written police reports and encounters with the public. 

The City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to begin using a suite of AI policing tools in officers’ body-worn cameras that can produce real-time transcriptions of police encounters and generate near-instantaneous police reports while officers are still at crime scenes. 

Roxana Kennedy, Chula Vista’s police chief, said the city’s four-year, $1 million contract with the police technology company Axon would be “a huge time-saver for our officers, allowing them to be out in the community” instead of at a desk filling out paperwork. 

Police reports are foundational components of the criminal justice system. They are used to establish basic facts in a criminal case and can influence jury verdicts and even neighborhood property values, since officers’ initial descriptions of police incidents are incorporated into crime statistics. 

Kennedy said Chula Vista officers spend at least three hours during every 10-hour shift writing such reports. With AI, “You can make more thorough and detailed reports” in less time, Kennedy said. “I never had anything like this.” 

In addition to video transcription and report-writing tools, the AI suite of products city leaders voted to purchase Tuesday includes a real-time language translation assistant in officers’ cameras and interactive access to the Chula Vista Police Department’s procedure manual. 

Kennedy said a small group of roughly eight officers already spent several months earlier this year testing the AI tool suite, called Axon AI Era Leaders. Kennedy said all of the department’s 110 patrol officers now will undergo training and begin using the tools later this year. 

Axon introduced its suite of AI-enabled law enforcement tools in 2024. A company spokesperson declined to say how many police agencies in the United States currently use the tools. 

The spokesperson said a handful of agencies in California, including police departments in Fresno and Campbell, have experimented with Axon AI tools or currently use them. 

“Axon AI solutions are being trialed and used across the country,” the spokesperson said. “Axon recognizes the immense promise of ethical AI innovation and aims to harness cutting-edge AI technology to revolutionize public safety.” 

The growing use of AI in policing has drawn criticism from civil liberties advocates, who say AI technology is too new and error-prone to be trusted in high-stakes police work. 

In a report issued late last year, Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said AI is “quirky and unreliable” and should not be used to analyze police camera footage or generate police reports. 

“In an ideal world, officers would carefully review an AI-generated first draft of a police report and correct any ‘hallucinations’ or other errors,” Stanley said in the report. “Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world, so one important question is how many such errors will creep into police reports and lead to injustices?” 

In January, the prosecuting attorney’s office in King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, told county police agencies prosecutors would not accept police reports generated by AI. 

“We do not want your officers certifying false police reports,” King County Chief Deputy Prosecutor Daniel J. Clark said in a letter to county police agencies. “In one example [of errors in AI-generated police reports] we have seen, an otherwise excellent report included a reference to an officer who was not even at the scene.” 

A spokesperson for San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said San Diego prosecutors currently “do not have a policy about police agencies using AI to transcribe video from police officer body-worn cameras. We will continue to evaluate cases submitted to us for prosecution based upon the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and we expect police departments to submit accurate police reports.” 

An Axon spokesperson said the company’s AI policing products include multiple layers of safeguards to ensure video transcripts and AI-generated police reports are accurate, unbiased and subject to human control. 

“Axon’s product development is driven by responsible innovation, grounded in a set of guiding principles in key areas to ensure that everything we do serves as a force for good,” the spokesperson said. 

Chula Vista Assistant Chief of Police Dan Peak assured City Councilmembers on Tuesday that using AI would not compromise officers’ police work. 

“Officers still proofread and finalize all reports,” Peak said. “There is a supervisorial process to approve officers’ reports…Officers are accountable for the accuracy of their reports up to giving testimony in court.” 

Peak said embedding AI in officers’ cameras actually would enhance accuracy by enabling officers to talk to the AI before and during a police encounter, ensuring that the AI generates the correct kind of report and fills it with accurate information. 

“Everyone is afraid of AI,” said Kennedy. “But if you learn how to prompt AI, you’d be amazed at the information you can get.” 

“AI is only as good as the hands that use it,” Kennedy said. “I’m very excited about it.”