Last updated: [CONFIRM — insert publication date]. This page explains our data handling in plain language. The binding terms are in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
1. What Field Notes Pro is
Field Notes Pro helps Texas officers, deputies, and troopers practice and draft CR-3 crash reports and incident reports. It walks the required elements of an offense with you, points out the fields that get reports kicked back, and produces a draft you rewrite in your own words.
It is a training and drafting tool. It is not a records management system, it is not a system of record, and nothing it produces is a filed report. Your case lives in your agency’s RMS. Every draft requires your review, your corrections, and your signature.
The app never decides probable cause, never swears to anything, and never files anything.
2. Do not enter real case data
No real names, plates, dates of birth, driver license numbers, addresses, case numbers, or narratives describing an actual incident. Invent them.
This is not boilerplate. Field Notes Pro is built on the assumption that no criminal justice information (CJI) enters it, and that assumption is what keeps it outside CJIS scope. It holds only if you honor it — so we screen for it as well as ask.
3. What leaves our servers
This is the question an agency IT shop asks first, so here is the direct answer, product by product.
Crash Narrative — yes, for draft generation
When you generate a narrative, the crash facts you entered are sent to OpenAI’s API to produce the draft text. Specifically:
Model: gpt-4o-mini. Processing location: the United States. Training: OpenAI does not use data submitted through its API to train its models.
Before that request is made, your free-text fields are scanned for likely personal information on our own server. If the scan finds any, the request is blocked and no data is sent to OpenAI. You get an error telling you what to remove. There is also an advisory scan in your browser that warns you earlier, but the server-side block is the control that actually governs — it cannot be bypassed from the client.
Case Builder — no
Case Builder’s fact extraction runs on our own server using deterministic rules. It does not call OpenAI or any other outside model provider. The notes you type into Case Builder are not transmitted to any third party for processing.
Case Builder also screens as you work: lines that look like they carry personal details are skipped during extraction and you are told which ones, and a scan in your browser warns you before you submit if what you typed looks like a real name, plate, address, or identifier.
If we ever enable an outside extraction provider for Case Builder, it will be governed by the same pattern: personal information is redacted before the request is built, and a request that still contains identifiers is rejected rather than sent. We will update this page before that changes, not after.
Payments
Card details never touch our servers. Payment is handled entirely by Stripe on Stripe-hosted pages. We receive subscription status and a customer reference — not card numbers.
4. What we store
On our server: your account information (name, email, role, agency type, password as a salted hash we cannot read), the text and drafts you create in the apps, your subscription status, and standard web-server and audit logs.
Nothing is stored only on your device. If you typed it into Field Notes Pro, it is on our server.
[CONFIRM] — name the hosting provider and the data-center region here. Agencies will ask whether data stays inside the United States, and the answer needs to be specific.
5. What protects it
Stated as it actually stands. An agency security review will test these, so there is no value in overstating them.
In place today:
- HTTPS/TLS everywhere — all traffic between your browser and our servers is encrypted in transit.
- Individual accounts. Each user has their own login. Shared credentials are not supported.
- Passwords stored as salted hashes. We cannot read your password.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA) — time-based one-time password (TOTP) authenticator apps, available to any signed-in user, with enrollment and removal both requiring a valid current code.
- Role-based access controls and least-privilege infrastructure practices.
- Audit logging. Account access and significant actions are recorded, including failed MFA attempts, so activity can be reconstructed.
- Personal-information screening in both apps, as described in section 3.
Not in place today:
- Encryption at rest. Stored content is not currently encrypted at rest. We would rather tell you that than let you assume otherwise. [CONFIRM — verify with your host before publishing; some managed platforms encrypt volumes by default, in which case rewrite this line to say so accurately.]
That gap is a large part of why the no-real-data rule is written the way it is. A training tool holding fictional scenarios does not need the full control set. A tool holding live case data would, and we are not going to claim a posture we have not built.
6. How long we keep it
Account and product content are retained while your account is active. If you cancel, your content stays available for the rest of your paid period. Content is deleted 90 days after account closure. Billing records are kept as long as tax and accounting law requires.
You can request deletion of your account and content at any time at support@getfieldnotespro.com. We complete verified requests within 30 days, except for records we are legally required to keep.
7. What we ask of you
- Use fictional scenarios. Invent the names, the plates, the addresses, and the dates.
- Refer to people by role or unit number rather than by name.
- Do not paste a real report, narrative, or affidavit into any field.
- Do not upload a scene photograph, body-worn camera still, or any document from a real case.
- Keep your login to yourself, and turn on MFA. Individual accounts are what make the audit log mean anything.
- Write the finished product for an actual case in your agency’s system.
8. For agency IT and CJIS Systems Officers
Field Notes Pro is positioned outside CJIS scope by design, on the basis that no criminal justice information is entered into it. We do not claim CJIS compliance and we hold no certification we have not named on this page.
The honest summary: this is appropriate today for training, academy instruction, and practicing report structure on fictional scenarios. It is not appropriate today as a system for drafting live case narratives, and we would rather say so here than have you find it in a review.
If you are evaluating Field Notes Pro for your agency, write to support@getfieldnotespro.com. We will answer specific questions about architecture, processing, and controls, including the uncomfortable ones.
[CONFIRM] — state whether a Data Processing Agreement or zero-retention arrangement is signed with OpenAI, beyond their standard API terms. This is the question a CJIS Systems Officer will ask, and “their public policy says so” is a weaker answer than a signed agreement.
9. Changes
We revise this page whenever what it describes changes, and we say what changed. If a change is material — a new processor, a change in what leaves our servers, a change in retention — we give notice before it takes effect, as described in the Privacy Policy.