Yorktown Police partners with Blue Voice

Yorktown police officers will soon be able to access legal and policy information hands-free through a new artificial intelligence platform.

The department’s partnership with Blue Voice — an AI system that gives first responders immediate access to legal, policy and community resources — makes Yorktown one of the first agencies in New York state to adopt the technology. Blue Voice has partnered with agencies across New England and is expanding into states including Texas, New Jersey and California.

Blue Voice CEO David Lawrence, a graduate of the Wharton School and Yale University, left Harvard Law School to found the company about two and a half years ago. He teamed up with Amit Patankar, formerly of the Google Brain team and a Harvard Business School graduate, and Michael Gropman, the company’s chief business officer and a former police commander in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Lawrence said that many AI tools had already been released and were being used in sectors like healthcare and education. Through discussions with local public safety leaders in Massachusetts, he noticed that it often takes several years for new technology to reach police — a delay he called “unfortunate,” given that officers perform a “critical” role in protecting the public and deserve access to the latest tools.

“Our observation initially was that in policing, there are a lot of policies, procedures, and laws—tens of thousands of pages, including state laws, local ordinances, policies, forms, operations, and plans. It's a lot for officers to remember, and sometimes there's not enough time to do anything other than take a best-informed guess in a situation,” Lawrence said. “We wanted to provide a resource that would allow officers to immediately access answers that are trusted and reliable.”

Lawrence and his team connected with Chief of Police Robert Noble through the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, when Blue Voice presented to the group.

“We are thrilled and honored to have Yorktown,” Lawrence said. “Chief Noble was incredibly welcoming and warm, and actually showed me around town. It was just very hospitable. So we're delighted to be starting with Yorktown.”

Yorktown, Lawrence confirmed, was the first agency in the state to sign, with the police departments in Corning and Endicott following suit.

“I think it's a credit to Chief Noble. He's not just interested in running a really efficient department — which he does from everything that I saw and everybody I met — but he's also interested in being out in front, being ahead of the technology curve, and adopting things that benefit the community.”

Police officials said the tool will let officers quickly retrieve state laws, town codes, department memorandums and Yorktown Police Department policies and procedures from their department-issued cellphones. The department will control the information uploaded to the platform to ensure accuracy.

“As was demonstrated to me, not all AI information is 100 percent relevant or reliable specifically to the Yorktown Police Department. Now it will be,” Noble told Yorktown News. “The Blue Voice app will be downloaded on all police department owned cell phones, allowing officers to retrieve prompt answers to job related inquiries while outside of the police car.“

The Town Board approved a two-year agreement with Blue Voice in November. The contract, funded through the LeTech Grant, will cost $5,000 in the first year and $14,000 in the second.

The department received in-person training from Lawrence in early October, followed by administrator training in early November. The software is expected to be fully rolled out by February 2026, with all necessary documents uploaded beforehand, giving officers quicker access to trusted information and strengthening public safety in the community.

“Blue Voice will provide timely, relevant, and reliable data to help us avoid mistakes, complete paperwork, and save time,” Noble said. “We are excited about this new partnership.”