This article first appeared in inewsource. Sign up for their newsletters here.The city of Chula Vista will start using artificial intelligence for some of its work related to 911 calls and police dispatching.
In a unanimous vote last week, the City Council agreed to expand its contract with AI software company Axon Enterprise Inc. to include using a product that in real time transcribes calls to text; drafts summaries of calls; translates for non-English speakers; and uses keyword alerts to help with dispatch and avoid missed transmissions.
Human dispatchers will still be answering 911 calls.
Using the additional Axon product known as “Prepared” will help reduce the “cognitive load” for dispatchers, especially when receiving non-emergency calls, a police official told councilmembers.“Our communication center is operating in an increasingly demanding environment,” said Kim Howard, the Police Department’s communications systems manager. “We continue to face staffing shortages and attrition, while call volumes and community expectations continue to rise.”
Howard said she wants to be very clear that the new product “will serve as an extension of our dispatch team, not a replacement, by supporting efficient call handling.”
Chula Vista already uses Axon software known as “Draft One” that produces notes using audio files of police officers’ body-worn camera footage. The product is optional for officers to use.
The Prepared software is already included in the city’s four-year, nearly $1 million contract with Axon and will not cost any additional money. Howard said the city will maintain all ownership of the data that the software collects, and that Axon has not reported any known data breaches.
Neither councilmembers nor members of the public commented on the new product at the meeting.Police spokesperson Caitlin Clark told inewsource in an email that the department does not yet have specific details on how AI will be used to reroute non-emergency calls.
“Since the program has not yet been implemented, we’ll have the opportunity during rollout to evaluate how the platform functions in our center and determine how features like call rerouting will be used,” Clark said. “We should have more information to provide as we move forward with the implementation.”
Civil rights and privacy groups have historically criticized the use of AI in police departments. More than a year ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a reportraising concerns over “unreliability and biased nature of AI, evidentiary and memory issues when officers resort to this technology, and issues around transparency.”
Seth Hall, a representative for the local advocacy organization Trust SD, told inewsource in an email that his group is “highly concerned about the increased use of mass surveillance, which is largely being sold under the trendy label of AI.”
He said these softwares are instead part of a “tightly interconnected network of unaccountable, expensive and problematic police mass surveillance systems.”
Axon told inewsource in an email that more than 1,000 agencies across 49 states use Prepared.Chula Vista police plan to release a progress report in the coming months on its use of the Draft One product.
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