The Invisible Weight: How AI Is Tackling Cognitive Load and Stress in Modern Policing

By Sean Bair, CEO of SWORN.ai and author of A.I. in Policing: The Rise of A.I. in the Fight Against Crime

The sergeant watched Officer Sarah Johnson type her fifteenth report at 2:30 a.m. and knew something was wrong. The content was fine, but her sentences had shortened. The details were thin. The rhythm was mechanical. Three weeks earlier, her reports had life. She wrote, “approximately six foot two, lanky build, moved with a noticeable limp.” Now it was just “Male, six two, thin.” Functional but hollow.

Her Oura Ring told the rest of the story. Broken sleep. Rising heart rate. No morning runs. The department’s top closer was running on fumes. By the time the sergeant noticed, she had already turned in her resignation. The question was not whether she was struggling, but why no one saw it sooner.

That unseen weight officers carry, the mental strain that never shows up in CAD or CompStat, is real. It drains departments of experience, money, and trust.

The Real Cost of Invisible Stress

Replacing a single officer costs between one hundred thousand and one hundred fifty thousand dollars when accounting for recruitment, academy training, field supervision, and the months before an officer reaches full effectiveness.1 Most agencies lose fifteen to twenty percent of their officers within five years.2

The toll is not just financial. Law enforcement suicide rates are two to three times higher than the general population.3 Add the operational consequences of stress (poor decisions under pressure, extended medical leave, and preventable liability incidents) and the true cost becomes staggering.

The warning signs often appear weeks before anyone reacts. Writing patterns change. Humor fades. Sleep deteriorates. Energy crashes. These are measurable and predictable indicators of cognitive overload long before resignation letters appear.

From AutoLog to SWORN

Many years ago, I built AutoLog to measure workload fairness across beats. It revealed something no one wanted to admit. Once we tracked all the work officers actually did (calls, POP projects, community interactions, and hours of paperwork) it became clear that some officers were quietly carrying far more than others. That imbalance was invisible, and it was burning people out.

As I wrote in A.I. in Policing: The Rise of A.I. in the Fight Against Crime (p. 66), the shift from AutoLog to SWORN was not about better data capture. It was about proactively supporting officers. Alongside three co-founders with public safety and business backgrounds, we set out to move beyond recording activity and start understanding how the job affects health and readiness.

SWORN was built on that foundation. The goal was to connect operational workload with personal wellbeing—to show how daily calls, stress, and fatigue combine to impact both performance and longevity.

Beyond Data: The Four Quadrants of Wellness

Most wellness programs focus on either fitness or mental health. SWORN was built differently. It
integrates four key quadrants that together define operational resilience:

1. Nutrition: Helps officers sustain energy and recovery by syncing meal recommendations
   with shift schedules, call intensity, and activity levels.

2. Fitness: Tracks physical readiness across different roles, recognizing the unique
   demands of patrol, investigations, or command work.

3. Sleep: Uses data from wearables such as Oura Ring, Apple Watch, and Fitbit to monitor
   sleep quality and recovery, turning raw numbers into actionable insights.

4. Experience: Analyzes CAD data to understand workload patterns, call exposure, and
   operational pressure points that affect stress and decision-making.

   
   

Each quadrant contributes to a more complete picture of how an officer is functioning both
physically and mentally. When combined, they create an unprecedented view of readiness
across an entire department.

Measuring Readiness in Real Time

SWORN also includes a brief daily survey that takes less than ten seconds to complete. Officers simply rate their energy, focus, and emotional readiness. This qualitative snapshot, combined with biometric and CAD data, creates a real-time profile of resilience and fatigue.

By blending hard data with human input, the platform gives agencies an early warning when officers are nearing overload. It allows leadership to adjust staffing, prioritize recovery, and prevent burnout before it leads to resignation or mistakes in the field.

Trust and Privacy Come First

Skepticism is natural. Officers have seen data weaponized for discipline, performance scoring, or internal affairs investigations. SWORN was built to change that.

The data belongs to the officer, not the department. SWORN exists to protect, not to monitor. When the system detects strain, the goal is to connect people to support resources, not to penalize them.

You would not blame a patrol car for overheating after running all day. You would service it, cool it down, and keep it in the fight. People deserve the same approach.

Departments that position SWORN as protective equipment, not surveillance, see the strongest adoption. Once officers understand the system exists to help them stay healthy and effective, trust builds naturally.

Predicting Stress Before It Happens

The next evolution is prediction. SWORN’s AI models now forecast stress up to three weeks before it peaks by analyzing patterns in workload, biometric data, and daily survey results.

If the system predicts that a deputy’s fatigue threshold will be reached in two weeks, leadership can act before performance drops or disengagement sets in. That is not theory. It is happening today in pilot programs.

Preventing one resignation saves a department over six figures. Preventing one stress-fueled incident could save millions in liability. This is not wellness talk. It is operational risk management.

The Bottom Line

Departments cannot build resilient communities with exhausted people. Agencies that measure and manage cognitive strain will lead the next generation of policing. They will keep their best people, reduce errors, and strengthen community trust. The rest will keep losing experienced officers and repeating the same cycle with new faces.

The Takeaway

The weight officers carry is real, but it does not have to remain invisible. SWORN helps agencies see what matters most; the intersection of health, workload, and human resilience. With the right data and intent, AI can protect the protectors and strengthen the foundation of every department.

That is why we built SWORN: to ensure the people who serve our communities are seen, supported, and ready.

To see how SWORN is helping agencies reduce turnover and strengthen readiness, start the conversation.

Footnotes

1. Florida Public Pension Trustees Association, What a Police Officer Costs: Priceless (Fact Sheet) (2025), available at https://fppta.org/what-a-police-officer-costs-priceless-fact-sheet. ↩

2. SpeakWrite, Police Turnover Rates: A Comprehensive Guide (2025); Wareham et al.,
   Rates and Patterns of Law Enforcement Turnover, Criminal Justice Policy Review
   (2015). ↩

3. Violanti, J.M. & Steege, A., Law Enforcement Worker Suicide: An Updated National
   Assessment, Policing: An International Journal (2021); CNA Corporation, Law
   Enforcement Deaths by Suicide (2024). ↩