LAMAR COUNTY, Miss. (WDAM) – Law enforcement agencies are speaking out after an AI-generated crime-reporting app caused a panic in Sumrall.
Now, police are warning communities: don’t believe everything your phone tells you.
“Just use a little common sense,” said Lamar County Sheriff Danny Rigel.
Rigel says it really is that simple.
When it comes to accurate crime reporting, he is warning everyone to avoid the apps you can get on your phone.
“One of them is Crime Radar,” Rigel said. “And basically, it’s AI-generated, and they monitor the radio transmissions for dispatch. And basically, it types out what they think dispatch is saying.”
The most recent incident happened Wednesday.
The Sumrall Police Department says this is the second time Crime Radar has falsely reported an incident in the town this month.
“Saying that there was an actual incident that happened on Church Street here in Sumrall,” said SPD Investigator Glenn Lowery. “They had a shooting and multiple people have been shot.”
Lowery says every call is taken seriously, but when officers arrived on Church Street, there were no victims, no suspects and no weapons. Just a flood of alerts and a community in panic
“The school contacted us and wanted to know if they needed to be put on lockdown. Plus, we started getting calls that were flooded into the police department saying, you know, ‘Hey, I’ve heard of this.’ ‘Is there something to this?’ ‘What do we need to do,’“ Lowery said.
Crime Radar says it is not an official report. It is “AI-generated text based on publicly available dispatch audio,” according to the app.
Sheriff Rigel says the app takes all dispatch traffic and publishes a conclusion. But the problem with that:
“Because of dead areas on the radio, traffic, maybe not enunciating words the right way, that they don’t understand what it is. So they kind of fill in the blanks,” Rigel said.
Crime Radar recommends, and law enforcement agrees, to verify all information with official sources.
“We want them to make sure they know that they can call the police department anytime,” Lowery said. “Just keep in mind when you look at these apps online and stuff like that, take it with a grain of salt “
Sheriff Rigel recommends using the same caution for all social media posts.
He says the most credible source is your local news station or contacting law enforcement directly.
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