ISLE OF PALMS, South Carolina – The Isle of Palms Police force is the first city-level police force in the state to test an artificial intelligence application for drafting incident reports.
Abel AI creates the draft from video footage captured by police officers’ body cameras. The department just completed the first month of a free three-month pilot program.
“It’s not doing my job for me, but it’s certainly making life a little easier,” Isle of Palms Police Department Officer Ned Donovan explained.
Abel AI is used by 25 police departments around the country, with the majority located on the West Coast, a handful in the Midwest, and several in Texas. The Isle of Palms Police Department is excited to be ahead of the curve in experimenting with technology new to the East Coast.
“We do transcription, but we also do computer vision analysis so it understands what’s going on on the screen,” Abel AI CEO Daniel Francis explained.
The agency has just completed the first month of a three-month pilot program to test out the tool. It complies with federal and state requirements, is securely held, and then removed.
“It picks up things that in the moment I didn’t notice, when we go to calls your adrenaline is quite high, your working at a much more focused level with dealing with the incident at hand, you maybe miss all of the details, but being able to go through that video and look at transcript that picks up everything makes sure that you can get them,” Donovan told me.
It’s not just copy and paste; the officer edits it, making modifications that the video did not catch, adding context, and ensuring there are no errors.
“We have to make sure that it’s a true reflection of what happened, and then if something happens down the road, that’s on me as the police officer who wrote the report,” Donovan told reporters.
Officers must sign an affidavit, which makes them legally liable for the report’s substance. Donovan stated that Abel AI produced department-specific improvements, such as report formatting, within the first month. Upgrades are also on the way.
“We are rolling out a tool by the end of the month that will allow administration of the agency to go in and edit their templates so it will allow them to write really specifically how they want,” Francis said the press.
Francis stated that police officers spend at least one-third of their time writing reports, and his platform assists them in reducing the amount of tax dollars spent on report writing while increasing their time spent in the field.
“I think most people would want police officers to spend more time in the streets and less time typing in the office, and that’s exactly what this does for us,” Donovan told the crowd.
Several Isle of Palms locals expressed support for the department’s use of the new technology.
“There is really no holding back artificial intelligence at this point, so if we can really understand it and harness it and use it for good things like police work, I’m all for it,” Alex Fritts, a resident, told me.
When the Isle of Palms pilot program is completed, the officers who participated will present their findings, and the city and police chief will determine whether to continue using it.
