AIFoPa-2026-0014
Date of Record: 27 Jul 2026
2 min read
Shop, Shot — A Transcription Difference
An app that turns police radio into AI-written alerts heard “Shop with a Cop” as “shot with a cop.” Oregon police warned residents it was generating misinformation.
CrimeRadar listens to police radio, transcribes it with artificial intelligence, and publishes alerts and short articles about what it believes it heard.
In December 2025 an officer in Central Oregon was at Shop with a Cop. It is a holiday event at which officers take children toy shopping. CrimeRadar heard “shot with a cop.”
“It doesn’t understand what Shop with a Cop means,” said Sheila Miller, communications manager for the Bend police. “So they say ‘shot with a cop,’ and now they’re suggesting that an officer has been shot in the line of duty in our community.”
The two words differ by a single consonant. They differ by a considerable margin in every other respect.
Oregon police warned residents that the app was generating misinformation. BBC Verify later found misleading CrimeRadar alerts about serious crime from Florida to Oregon.
The error was a real word, correctly spelled, in a grammatical sentence. Nothing in the alert told a reader it was wrong.
The Bureau notes a related failure for cross-reference. A transcript that drops a word is deficient. A transcript that drops the word “not” is fluent, confident, grammatical, and the precise opposite of what was said. There is nothing in its surface for a reader to catch.