AI Resilience Report forPolice and Sheriff's Patrol Officers

Right now, AI is mostly helping patrol officers rather than replacing them — and the biggest changes are happening at the desk, not on the street. The paperwork side of the job is where automation is moving fastest: tools like Axon's Draft One turn body-camera audio into a first draft of a police report, and police departments across the country are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to help draft reports, analyze evidence and manage massive amounts of digital data from body cameras, surveillance systems and case files, with hours of footage able to be analyzed in minutes. On patrol, AI-powered license plate readers, gunshot detection, drones, and body-worn cameras ^[1] turn raw sensor data into leads officers can act on, and Police Chief Magazine describes facial recognition as an "assistive" technology that helps investigators do tasks they already do with greater speed and accuracy ^[2].

Meanwhile, autonomous police drones have now reached about 1,000 U.S. agencies ^[3], often as first responders to calls. But the core, physical parts of the job — chasing suspects, giving first aid, transporting prisoners — are still 100% human.

Adoption is real but cautious. A National Policing Institute survey found only 38% of agency representatives acknowledged using AI currently, 20% said they were not using AI, and 32% said they were pilot-testing or evaluating AI tools. Cost pressure and staffing shortages push chiefs toward AI because officers are already quietly using generative AI to speed up reports, forcing supervisors to catch up on review policies ^[4].

Slowing things down: legal and civil-liberties concerns. At least two states, California and Utah, have recently enacted laws regulating the use of generative AI in police report writing, and a new study found AI reports were rated significantly worse on accuracy, moving a report from roughly the 50th to the 36th percentile on perceived accuracy. So the human judgment, empathy, and physical courage patrol officers bring to a scene aren't going anywhere soon — but the future officer will almost certainly work with AI as a partner.