Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes abstained from the vote to approve a five-year $1.66 million contract with Motorola Solutions.
The Riverside Police Department (RPD) is set to receive new body cameras equipped with several artificial intelligence (AI) features to assist officers in their work.
“It will definitely help our officers in reducing report writing time and allowing our officers to get back onto the field,” Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said during a February 10 Riverside City Council meeting.
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The Riverside City Council earlier this month approved a five-year $1.66 million contract with Motorola Solutions to replace 385 aging and out-of-warranty body cameras the department has bought over the last six years. Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes abstained from the vote.
RPD expects to receive the new tech in the coming weeks, Lt. Eric Meier told The Riverside Record, with officers fully equipped with the new gear later this year.
Meier said the body cameras contain two AI-powered features for officers to use in-the-field: A real-time translation tool that can translate a conversation in over 30 languages and a virtual assistant that labels body camera footage in response to an officer’s command.
The body cameras can also be equipped with a tool that allows officers to ask policy-related questions using a large language model and run a host of other commands, according to the agreement document between the company and the city, but Meier said both of those features would be disabled.
The new tech will also have the ability to automatically upload audio and video files, via a cloud-based storage system, to an all-in-one digital workspace called CommandCentral DEMS. Officers would then be able to log onto the platform to create AI-generated transcriptions and narrative summaries from the video and audio files, according to Meier, which officers could use to help write police reports.
“We’re hopeful that it’ll alleviate the amount of time that officers spend writing reports,” Meier said. “Obviously, it’s not going to be able to describe the officer’s own observations or the things that they’re seeing, but it can transcribe those statements into summaries.”
Within the evidence management system, the department’s public records personnel have access to an AI-assisted redaction tool that identifies commonly-redacted items, like license plates, faces or private information, and removes them from the video or audio file with just a few clicks. Meier said this could help speed up audio and video processing for public release.
Beryl Lipton, a senior investigative researcher with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, spent years researching law enforcement’s implementation of AI.
She pointed out several potential pitfalls with the new features: concerns over hallucinated information within the AI-generated summaries, officers not reviewing that information before placing it into a report and the potential for over-redacted documents.
To address these concerns, she recommended agencies create clear policies, implement regular audit protocols and enforce consequences when it becomes clear an agent did not properly follow its standards.
“It’s kind of difficult to put safeguards in, ones that are really going to sort of capture the world of ways that some of these things can be abused,” Lipton said. “But I think a good starting point is having clear policies — clear expectations for when and how something can be used — and just ensuring that somebody is following up on that and will actually provide some consequences if there’s been a failure.”
RPD has already added policies to its manual detailing how generative AI can and cannot be used, Meier said, as well as updating its policy on reports to include new instructions when using AI. Once it obtains the tech, the department plans to host additional training to make its officers aware of the updated policies.
Reports that partially, or fully, use AI would be required to have a disclaimer as required by Senate Bill 524, he said. That disclaimer would let supervisors know, when they review the document, to ensure the report is “true and accurate.” There would also be ramifications for not adhering to the policies, Meier added, but said potential consequences would be on a case-by-case basis.
“A police report is a legal document, it’s very serious,” Meier said. “What we’re going to stress to our officers is that they have to review this, because their name is on it and it’s something that potentially could end up in court.”
Separately, Lipton also expressed concern that Motorola Solutions could, in the future, add facial recognition software to its body cameras via an update. The company already provides similar technology to stadium security teams but has not added it to its suite of police gear.
“There are possibly really intense features that can be added retroactively, like face recognition, like biometric identification, that are very alarming,” Lipton said. “That’s something that is important to keep an eye on, and is something that is concerning as more law enforcement officers agencies are adopting AI-assisted capabilities.”
Meier said that he wasn’t aware of Motorola’s AI-powered video analytics tools and further explained the department has neither had conversations nor created plans to use the tools in the future.
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