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Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

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Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#71
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

I don’t know the numbers, but DNA exonerations give a bit of a natural experiment (where testable evidence was preserved).

They give a floor, and that floor is too small to be useful.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

When DNA matching was introduced, we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent. Death row cases are among the most litigated and examined cases. So, 10% is a reasonable floor, and we're already in double digits.

That stat is off by a couple orders of magnitude. The total number of death penalty convictions overturned by DNA evidence is 29 (as of 2025). There are a couple thousand death row inmates right now, and the denominator here is all the people who were on death row in the last 20+ years. That's a rate of significantly https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/first-death-row-exoneration-inv...

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#73
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

Shouldn't it be the exact opposite here ? The burden of proof is the other way around. The big claim is here: the state has grandiose claims that the overwhelming majority is fair, but there is no proof of it. Therefore the state should prove that more than 90% of the cases are legitimate, fair, not coerced, and not motivated by the pressure to interrupt the proceedings. 97% of people choose plea deals or out-of-cour…

That is true--the checks and balances the founding fathers fought so hard for were thrown out the window with overlegislation and expansion of prosecutorial discretion in 20th century. To make a convincing argument that "double digits" of cases involve fabricated evidence, you still need to explain why prosecutors would engage in fraud at this massive scale. Just laziness? Collecting scalps? The incentives run that way in some limited cases, e.g., prosecutor up for election, post-reconstruction south. But you need some explanation there.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#74
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

Shouldn't it be the exact opposite here ? The burden of proof is the other way around. The big claim is here: the state has grandiose claims that the overwhelming majority is fair, but there is no proof of it. Therefore the state should prove that more than 90% of the cases are legitimate, fair, not coerced, and not motivated by the pressure to interrupt the proceedings. 97% of people choose plea deals or out-of-cour…

A burden of proof is associated with an individual claim. There’s no “burden of proof in the other direction” - what you’ve actually done is created a second burden of proof and also - worse - attempted to distract from the original point.

It is disingenuous to weasel out of proving one claim by making another, or saying “look over here”

Also, outrageous claims in opposite directions can both be bullshit.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#75
post #66
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reasonably sets a floor I disagree wrt reasonableness. It’s just too big a leap. There are a lot of crimes, and not many land you on death row.

The observation was that death row represents the highest level of scrutiny, and still had 10% false positives for guilt. Is there any argument that less-scrutinized cases would have a lower level of false convictions?

The 10% claim has been refuted.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#76
The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it. Since “enhancing” is letting AI fill in the gaps it would be using AI to “create evidence”.

Regardless of what they did, tampering with evidence is completely unacceptable and should result in their dismissal and conviction but I don’t think the story will transpire to be as attention grabbing. A well meaning idiot could convince themselves that enhancing evidence is somehow justifiable whereas it would be almost impossible for even the most corrupt moron to justify creating evidence out of thin air.

Creating evidence out of thin air would be ridiculous because evidence is available to the defence who would be able to immediately identify if an image or video had been created (as the defendant would be able to recognize what they do or did not do) whereas “enhancing” an image could be easily spotted by other officers. “How come this photo is clearer than the last time I saw it?” “Oh I ran it through ChatGPT to clean it up! Neat, eh? Just like on CSI!”

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

When DNA matching was introduced, we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent. Death row cases are among the most litigated and examined cases. So, 10% is a reasonable floor, and we're already in double digits.

"we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent"

How did we do that? I never heard this: certainly 10% of people on death row weren't exonerated by DNA? This is some kind of shaky extrapolation I assume?

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

A few years ago, one of my coworkers was arrested for a domestic violence complaint. Looking into his case, I found an extremely specific lurid description of the allegations -- and then I found the same lurid description copy/pasted to every other person recently arrested for the same crime. I'm probably getting the specific terms wrong, but I did click through to see it on a government website, because my first sus…

Why did you "look into the case of your coworker"?

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#79
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US? Probably a large double-digit percentage of cases imo…

> large double-digit percentage This is a very very intense claim, and if true, would represent a monumental institutional failure across hundreds or even thousands of disparate organizations. Do you have any data to support your hunch? Strong claims require strong evidence.

We have the highest proportion of imprisoned citizens in the world.

This is done because there's an exception in our constitution for slavery "as punishment for a crime" and well all know that capitalism loves slave labor.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#80
post #6

i do wonder, that in the age where we have image and video creation out of the bag, whether or not this will result in whole classes of evidence becoming completely unreliable.

There's a big gap between "theoretically unreliable" and courts actually recognizing that, unfortunately. Lots of forensics is much more dubious than CSI would have you believe.

My girlfriends been having me watch law and order svu with her and to be honest it doesn't really even seem trustworthy with how they want to present it. The psychologist guy especially will come up with some wildly detailed assertions about who the criminal is based on nothing
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