{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/police-and-sheriff-s-patrol-officers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers",
    "soc_code": "33-3051",
    "category": "Protective Service",
    "us_employment": 670520,
    "median_annual_wage": 76210
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 82,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 16,
    "embodiment": 20,
    "liability_shield": 16,
    "trust_premium": 13,
    "judgment_accountability": 17
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "A patrol shift is domestic disturbances, welfare checks, foot pursuits, roadside sobriety testing and crash scene control — tasks that require entering a stranger's living room and reading a situation in real time, which is why the score sits at 16 rather than 20: report narratives, e-citations, NCIC/plate queries and evidence logging are already being drafted and auto-populated by software.",
    "embodiment": "Officers work outdoors in weather, at night, on highways with live traffic, and go hands-on to handcuff resisting subjects, drag victims from vehicles and clear structures — there is no controlled environment anywhere in the job, which is what a 20 means.",
    "liability_shield": "State POST certification is a legal prerequisite to make a custodial arrest or swear a warrant affidavit, and officers are personally named as defendants in §1983 excessive-force suits with qualified immunity decided case by case; it stops short of 20 only because qualified immunity and municipal indemnification absorb most of the financial hit.",
    "trust_premium": "Victims deciding whether to cooperate, informants deciding whether to talk, and neighborhoods deciding whether to call 911 all turn on the officer being a recognized human presence — but patrol is dispatch-assigned and largely anonymous encounter to encounter, so the relationship supports the work rather than being the product, placing it at 13 not 18.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Whether a Terry stop is supported by reasonable suspicion, whether force is objectively reasonable under Graham, whether to arrest or divert a person in mental health crisis — these are seconds-long, irreversible calls made on incomplete facts and reviewed later by prosecutors, courts and internal affairs, with department policy narrowing but never resolving the ambiguity."
  },
  "rationale": "Patrol work is responding to calls in unpredictable physical settings, physically detaining people, controlling traffic scenes, and making use-of-force and arrest decisions in seconds — none of which current AI or robotics can do. The automatable slice is real but administrative: incident report drafting, citation paperwork, records queries, and license-plate and camera review. Only a sworn, state-certified officer can make a custodial arrest or execute a warrant, and that officer is personally named in the litigation that follows.",
  "outlook": "Headcount holds or grows through 2035 while report-writing and records time collapses, pushing officers toward more calls, more court time, and more scrutiny of AI-assisted documentation.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) boards or legislatures explicitly barring AI-generated probable-cause narratives from being submitted without a sworn officer's personal attestation — already in motion: Utah SB 180 (2025) requires disclosure when reports are AI-drafted, and King County WA prosecutors (2024) refuse Axon Draft One AI reports outright. If attestation-plus-personal-liability language spreads to statute, the sworn signature becomes the only lawful route to charging.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Post-Fourth-Amendment litigation over algorithmic tips (facial recognition, ShotSpotter, ALPR) settling into a rule that an officer must independently corroborate machine output before seizure — several circuits and city ordinances (e.g. Detroit's 2024 FR settlement with the ACLU) already require independent corroboration. That formally assigns the consequential call to the human.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: if report drafting, citation entry, and camera/ALPR review are absorbed by tools, the residual job is almost entirely street contact, de-escalation, and force decisions — a genuinely two-tier occupation where the automatable tier is the smaller and lower-judgment one. Raises resistance without any new law, though it also reduces headcount need per call volume.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Union contract or consent-decree language requiring in-person human response for specified call types (domestic violence, welfare checks) rather than remote/automated triage — FOP and IUPA locals have bargained against civilianization and drone-as-first-responder programs in Chula Vista CA and NYPD. Community-oversight boards demanding human presence are the visible mechanism.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Already 82/100; headroom is ~8 points at most and embodiment is maxed. The realistic risk direction is not displacement but headcount compression per agency as drone-as-first-responder and AI dispatch triage reduce officers needed per call — a scope change the register's dimensions do not capture."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 662390,
        "wage": 61050
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 661330,
        "wage": 61380
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 665280,
        "wage": 63150
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 654900,
        "wage": 65540
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 665380,
        "wage": 64610
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 655890,
        "wage": 65790
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 646310,
        "wage": 72280
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 666990,
        "wage": 76290
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 670520,
        "wage": 76210
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 1.2,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}