AI exposure: Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers
Maintain order and protect life and property by enforcing local, tribal, state, or federal laws and ordinances. Perform a combination of the following duties: patrol a specific area; direct traffic; issue traffic summonses; investigate accidents; apprehend and arrest suspects, or serve legal processes of courts. Includes police officers working at educational institutions.
Reading this score
computedAt 12.4% of weighted task load, Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers sits at the 19th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 72.1% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is presence. Across this occupation's 30 tasks it averages 2.32 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, a person has to be the one present. This is the friction software does not erode. Where the point of the act is that a human is there, to care or to witness or to take responsibility in the room, automating the output misses what was being paid for.
The most exposed thing this job does is Inform citizens of community services and recommend options to facilitate longer-term problem..., at 49.6%. The least is Serve statements of claims, subpoenas, summonses, jury summonses, orders to pay alimony, and..., at 0.0%. A gap of 49.6% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within protective service occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.9% across the group's 26 roles, with 24 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 30 tasks, 5 are currently banded exposed, 5 assisted and 20 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.13 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.07 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.32 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.71 | 0-3 |
| Context | 2.09 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.23 | 0-3 |
Task by task
30 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inform citizens of community services and recommend options to facilitate longer-term problem resolution. | 49.6% | 37.9% | 12.5% | 3.76 | exposed |
| Record facts to prepare reports that document incidents and activities. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.47 | exposed |
| Evaluate complaint and emergency-request information to determine response requirements. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.15 | exposed |
| Process prisoners, and prepare and maintain records of prisoner bookings and prisoner status during booking and pre-trial process. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 3.96 | exposed |
| Conduct community programs for all ages concerning topics such as drugs and violence. | 42.5% | 32.5% | 25.0% | 3.57 | exposed |
| Verify that the proper legal charges have been made against law offenders. | 35.0% | 40.0% | 25.0% | 4.53 | assisted |
| Relay complaint and emergency-request information to appropriate agency dispatchers. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.23 | assisted |
| Notify patrol units to take violators into custody or to provide needed assistance or medical aid. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 3.97 | assisted |
| Monitor, note, report, and investigate suspicious persons and situations, safety hazards, and unusual or illegal activity in patrol area. | 14.4% | 35.6% | 50.0% | 4.29 | assisted |
| Investigate illegal or suspicious activities. | 10.0% | 40.0% | 50.0% | 4.41 | assisted |
| Monitor traffic to ensure motorists observe traffic regulations and exhibit safe driving procedures. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.20 | untouched |
| Question individuals entering secured areas to determine their business, directing and rerouting individuals as necessary. | 9.2% | 15.8% | 75.0% | 3.87 | untouched |
| Review facts of incidents to determine if criminal act or statute violations were involved. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.43 | untouched |
| Investigate traffic accidents and other accidents to determine causes and to determine if a crime has been committed. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.29 | untouched |
| Patrol and guard courthouses, grand jury rooms, or assigned areas to provide security, enforce laws, maintain order, and arrest violators. | 5.4% | 7.1% | 87.5% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Locate and confiscate real or personal property, as directed by court order. | 2.9% | 9.6% | 87.5% | 3.87 | untouched |
| Photograph or draw diagrams of crime or accident scenes and interview principals and eyewitnesses. | 2.1% | 10.4% | 87.5% | 4.00 | untouched |
| Provide for public safety by maintaining order, responding to emergencies, protecting people and property, enforcing motor vehicle and criminal laws, and promoting good community relations. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.71 | untouched |
| Identify, pursue, and arrest suspects and perpetrators of criminal acts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.70 | untouched |
| Render aid to accident survivors and other persons requiring first aid for physical injuries. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Drive vehicles or patrol specific areas to detect law violators, issue citations, and make arrests. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.39 | untouched |
| Execute arrest warrants, locating and taking persons into custody. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Patrol specific area on foot, horseback, or motorized conveyance, responding promptly to calls for assistance. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.20 | untouched |
| Testify in court to present evidence or act as witness in traffic and criminal cases. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.17 | untouched |
| Place people in protective custody. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.15 | untouched |
| Transport or escort prisoners and defendants en route to courtrooms, prisons or jails, attorneys' offices, or medical facilities. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.00 | untouched |
| Direct traffic flow and reroute traffic in case of emergencies. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.93 | untouched |
| Provide road information to assist motorists. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.51 | untouched |
| Supervise law enforcement staff, such as jail staff, officers, and deputy sheriffs. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.32 | untouched |
| Serve statements of claims, subpoenas, summonses, jury summonses, orders to pay alimony, and other court orders. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.25 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.