Nampa police employ AI software to draft crime reports

NAMPA, Idaho — AI is now a part of many aspects of daily life. It's helped make some people's jobs easier, and that includes police officers. The Nampa Police Department is one of many departments across the country using AI to streamline some of their work.

The Nampa Police Department said one of their biggest uses is to draft police reports. An officer's workload is broken into three areas: reactive, meaning responding to calls; proactive, meaning looking for or fighting crime; and administrative tasks.

Lt. Jason Kimball said the third portion of their workload has been reduced with the assistance of AI.

"That is what this has helped us with is taking that third of their time; it has reduced that significantly to a much lower amount of time where they're no longer writing reports for a third of their shift," Kimball said.

The department uses a service called "Policereports.AI", which they have been using for about two years as of September 2026.

"A great example is a drug recognition expert. Their report averages about two hours normally; with using the AI platform we use, it's down to 12 minutes," Lt. Kimball said.

According to Chris Ryan, the Chief Product Officer at Policereports.AI, the system is based on the officer's dictation.

"The officer is still controlling that narrative; they are giving their facts, their experiences, their observations that aren't picked up on body camera, so they are still maintaining that authorship of that report, which is really important for those questions that folks have about AI use in the criminal justice system," Ryan said.

But how does the system actually work? According to Kimball, an officer can dictate their recollection of an incident into a phone, through a recorded system, and a report is generated from there.

"It's simply a draft. It's not the full report, and that's what really using the AI platform is: [creating] a draft for a report," Lt. Kimball said.

Lt. Kimball said they rely on the officers to go through every line, every word, and every sentence to make sure it's accurate to what they recall of the events that occurred.

Boise attorney Kurt Holzer said if it is pure dictation, the service can work great. But if the AI modifies anything, that's where it can get tricky in court.

"To the extent that there is actually any utilization of the large language models and their skills with language to modify what the officer says, now we start to have problems," Holzer said.

Lt. Kimball says that was a concern for the department and the prosecutor's office when the decision to use AI was made.

"As long as we can show up on stand and testify that what we saw on scene is accurately depicted in the report itself," Lt. Kimball said.

According to Holzer, accuracy is the most important piece.

"That's really what we want is an accurate record, and if the AI modifies things then we run a substantial risk of it not being an accurate record, and inaccurate records in courtrooms lead to unfair outcomes whether that's in a criminal case or a civil case," Holzer said.

Holzer says the use of AI in reports, as it pertains to how it will play out in court for the long term, is still an open question. He says lawyers from both sides will be looking at it all the time to protect the accused or to make sure the state is doing the right thing.

Ryan says they take extra precautions with safeguards and governance to make sure the rule of law is still upheld. According to the company, NPD has saved about 12,000 hours in those two years, which equates to the work of 10 officers on an annual average.