Cambridgeshire Constabulary has launched an artificial intelligence system designed to change the way residents report non-emergency crime.
Citizen Assist went live on the force’s website on 24 September, as part of a national pilot developed through the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Digital Public Contact programme. The technology allows members of the public to report crime through a natural text conversation, rather than completing a lengthy online form or waiting to speak to a 101 call handler. It can ask follow-up questions, gather information, create a structured crime report and submit it directly into existing police systems. The initial pilot covers reporting pathways for assaults, threats, damage and theft.
For residents, the most significant change is the way they can provide information. Instead of working through a series of questions, they can explain what happened in their own words and allow the AI to guide the conversation. Chief Constable Simon Megicks says the scheme is about “utilising new technology to improve the service we can provide to the public” and developing the reporting options already available.
“As we move through an increasingly digital world, as a Constabulary, we recognise the importance of embracing AI in a way that means we’re able to provide another, convenient way to report crime digitally,” he says.
However, the force has stressed that Citizen Assist is not replacing existing ways of contacting police. “This technology will not be replacing our other reporting methods,” Megicks says, “but rather offering the public another method to report crime, should they choose to utilise it.”
How Citizen Assist works
Members of the public accessing the Citizen Assist option can have a natural conversation with the system, answer questions about an incident and review the completed report before submission. They will then receive a reference number and information about the next steps. The system is intended to make the reporting process easier while also helping police receive better structured information at the beginning of the process.
Megicks says: “Citizen Assist is a great opportunity to harness modern technology to help ensure crime reports reach us with accurate, high quality information from the outset, benefiting both the public, and the force.”
The system is also designed to ask relevant questions based on what a person tells it. Megicks believes it is important for the technology to allow people “to explain what has happened in their own words”, with AI then able to ask follow-up questions “in order to capture a clear and accurate picture, collected in a concise crime report.”
That is a significant difference from a conventional online form, where the person reporting an incident must work through the questions presented to them. The potential benefit for police is that information can arrive in a structured format, potentially reducing the need for staff to obtain basic missing details. However, the material released about the pilot does not yet show whether Citizen Assist will increase the number of crimes reported, reduce incomplete reports or lead to faster investigations. Those are questions the pilot will need to explore.
Police officers remain in control
The introduction of AI into crime reporting could raise questions about who makes decisions about a report. Cambridgeshire Constabulary has been clear that those decisions remain with police staff and officers.
“While the AI technology will help to collect and collate relevant information and turn it into a crime report,” Megicks stresses, “all decisions about the report will remain firmly with police staff and officers, just as it does with existing online crime reports.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council has also said Citizen Assist is designed to support, rather than replace, existing policing decision-making. The pilot has been introduced with governance and oversight arrangements, with wider rollout dependent on its outcome. Darryl Preston, Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, says the pilot will allow the force to understand “what truly works for the public of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough”. He also says he hopes the technology will improve accessibility.
“While there are many benefits to be gained, I especially hope it will increase accessibility while reducing the need for victims to relive what happened to them,” he says. “This is our opportunity to shape a national solution.”
How does it compare with other police AI?
Cambridgeshire’s approach is different from the AI system introduced by Thames Valley Police and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary. The two forces launched an AI virtual assistant called Bobbi in November 2025. It was designed to answer frequently asked, non-emergency questions from the public. It can provide information and help people find the appropriate support, but it cannot be used to report a crime and is not an alternative to the emergency 999 service. Instead, Bobbi operates alongside existing online forms, telephone lines and front counters.
The difference is therefore straightforward. Bobbi is primarily an information and guidance service, while Citizen Assist has been designed to support the crime reporting process itself.
Thames Valley Police said Bobbi was intended to provide quick answers to routine questions, allowing its human call handlers and Digital Desk operators to concentrate on emergencies and more complex or sensitive matters. Chief Superintendent Simon Dodds says: “Locally and nationally, contact into the police increases year-on-year, online and over the phone, and it is important that the valuable skillset of our Call Handlers and Digital Desk Operators is spent on emergencies and complex, sensitive issues.”
He also stresses the importance of human involvement, saying that “empathy, common sense and that intangible gut instinct” are among the human skills needed when dealing with people, particularly when they are in need.
Bobbi was tested by more than 200 people during its development, including representatives from victim care groups and independent scrutiny panel members. Six months after its launch, information supplied by the forces said Bobbi was helping manage the equivalent of 14,000 citizen contacts annually across both forces and freeing an estimated 3,266 operational hours each year.
That provides an example of AI being used to reduce routine demand on police staff, but it is solving a different problem from Citizen Assist.
West Midlands takes a different approach
West Midlands Police is using AI in yet another way. Its Orlo Shield and Assist technology operates behind the scenes, supporting the force’s digital contact staff as they manage thousands of messages. The AI can help prioritise urgent messages, flag potentially harmful social media content, suggest draft responses, create summaries of previous conversations and identify signs that images may have been generated by AI. Unlike Citizen Assist and Bobbi, the system does not have a direct conversation with members of the public.
West Midlands Police describes it as an administrative assistant that helps staff sort, organise and draft information while humans remain in control. The force says staff can change, remove or correct AI-generated labels, while every response sent to the public is written and approved by a human. The system is also not used to make operational decisions, risk assessments or investigative judgements.
The three approaches therefore have clear differences. Cambridgeshire is using AI to help carry out the reporting process; Thames Valley is using AI to answer routine questions and guide members of the public; and West Midlands is using AI behind the scenes to support staff managing digital communications.
Could Citizen Assist increase crime reporting?
Whether Citizen Assist will result in more crime being reported is one of the most important questions surrounding the pilot. The stated aim is to make the process simpler and more accessible, but there is currently no evidence in the supplied material showing that it will increase reporting. The argument for the system is that some people may find a conversation easier than completing an online form. Instead of having to decide what information is relevant, the user can explain the incident naturally and allow the AI to ask additional questions.
Megicks says reporting a crime online should be “simple and straightforward” but acknowledges that for some people it can feel “time-consuming and complicated”. Preston also highlights accessibility and the possibility of reducing the need for victims to repeat what happened.
Alex Murray OBE, interim director of PoliceAI, says giving people another way to contact police could make the process “quicker and easier for the public while reducing bureaucracy for officers and staff”.
The important point is that Citizen Assist is being presented as another option rather than a replacement for human contact. People who prefer existing reporting methods will continue to be able to use them.
What could it mean for residents?
For Cambridgeshire residents, the immediate change is the availability of another digital route for reporting eligible non-emergency crime. Users can describe what happened, answer questions, review their report and submit it. For police, the potential benefit is the collection of more complete and structured information at the start of the process. The technology could also reduce some of the administrative work involved in creating a report, although the pilot will need to establish whether that happens in practice.
There are also wider plans for the technology. The underlying capability has been designed for use across both digital and voice channels, potentially supporting future services involving conversational reporting, advice and guidance, citizen messaging and other public contact functions. That means the Cambridgeshire pilot is not simply about replacing an online form. It is testing whether a conversational approach can become part of the way people interact with policing more generally.
The pilot will ultimately need to show whether people find the system easier to use, whether it produces the information police need and whether it changes the way residents choose to report crime. As Megicks says: “I’m proud that we are constantly developing the service we provide, and I believe that by taking part in this pilot, we will help to play our part in improving crime reporting options for the people of Cambridgeshire.”
For now, Citizen Assist is a test of that idea. It gives Cambridgeshire residents another way to report crime and gives police the opportunity to see whether a conversation with AI can make the process simpler, while keeping human officers and staff responsible for the decisions that follow.
You can find information about how to report a crime on the Cambridgeshire Constabulary website.
This article is republished with kind permission of CambsNews. Read the original here.
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