Technology’s Effect on Advocacy
When AI Writes the Police Report: What Plaintiffs’ Attorneys Need to Know By Denisse Gastélum Artificial intelligence is now writing police reports. Let that sink in for a moment.
ChatGPT, and Truleo’s Field Notes, which is powered by Amazon Bedrock. Both work in essentially the same way. An officer uploads body- worn camera footage, the software transcribes the audio using generative AI, and the system produces a narrative police report based on the verbal interchange it captured. The officer selects the incident category, reviews the draft, fills in missing details, and signs an acknowledgment that they reviewed the report and that the facts are true and correct. Here is what you need to understand. First, these tools process audio only. They do not analyze the video. That means the AI cannot see what happened, it can only hear what was said. Think about that in the context of a use-of-force case. If an officer does not narrate what they observe in real time, the AI has no way to capture it. A chokehold that is visible on video but never described aloud will not appear in the AI- generated narrative. Second, the AI is trained to produce polished, professional prose. A report that might have been three rough paragraphs of an officer’s handwritten notes becomes a clean, detailed, authoritative-sounding narrative. That is the product’s selling point: it is also the problem. And the technology is spreading fast. Axon has described Draft One as its fastest-growing product. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office alone generated more than 3,000 Draft One reports between December 2024 and March 2025. In California, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has already adopted a policy governing its use. (LASD Manual, Policy No. 25-10, “ Law Enforcement use of Artificial
I litigate civil rights cases for a living: police shootings, in-custody deaths, excessive force. In every single one of those cases, the police report is foundational. It shapes the investigation. It drives the media narrative. It influences charging decisions. And it becomes the backbone of discovery. So when I learned that law enforcement agencies are now uploading body-worn camera footage to AI-powered software that drafts a fully written police report in minutes, polished, detailed, and authoritative- sounding, I had one reaction: we need to talk about this. The reality? These reports shape what the public believes happened. They shape what prosecutors believe happened. And if we as plaintiffs’ attorneys are not paying attention, they will shape what juries believe happened, too.
How AI Report Writing Works.
The two dominant products on the market are Axon’s Draft One, which runs on a variant of
Denisse Gastélum is a civil rights attorney focusing on police shootings and in-custody death cases, representing plaintiffs in state and federal courts throughout the State of California. She is the founder and trial lawyer of Gastélum Law, APC.
dgastelum@gastelumfirm.com
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Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM September/October 2026
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