Douglas County is making its test run with artificial intelligence official. County commissioners voted unanimously this week to buy TimePilot, an AI evidence platform for the sheriff’s office, signing off on roughly $100,000 to shift the software from a yearlong trial into a paid subscription. Officials say the tool helps investigators pull together sprawling case files, surveillance footage, phone logs, reports, and more — into streamlined timelines and summaries that can speed up casework. The approval follows months of testing in which detectives loaded a set of major investigations into the system to see what it could actually do.
What the board signed off on
The Board of County Commissioners placed the TimePilot purchase on its April 14 consent agenda, authorizing an FY2026 buy listed as "FY2026 Tranquility AI - TimePilot" for about $100,000. According to Douglas County, the sheriff’s investigations division asked for spending authority so it could move from the pilot phase to full implementation for investigators.
What TimePilot is built to do
TimePilot is marketed as an all in one investigative evidence platform that can pull together different types of files, auto generate timelines and provide an interactive AI assistant investigators can query for leads. The company says the system can ingest video, documents, phone records, and open source material, then turn that into reports and victimology summaries for analysts to review. Those product details come from Tranquility AI’s public materials, as outlined on Tranquility AI via Carahsoft.
Sheriff’s office: From months to hours
Brian Murphy, a sheriff’s office official, told commissioners the platform has dramatically shortened analysis time. "It's taking months of work and distilling it down to an hour or two," he said. During the trial period, the office reported using TimePilot on roughly 30 major cases — including homicides, cold cases, missing person investigations, and a high-profile kidnapping — to organize files and generate case summaries. Officials stressed that the tool "only analyzes information uploaded by investigators" and does not independently identify suspects, as reported by Denver Gazette.
What the contract looks like
Procurement documents in the county packet include a vendor price quote that lists TimePilot Pro at $100,000 per year for a one-year subscription. The quote covers 20 user seats and 4 terabytes of data ingestion annually. It also lists an optional extra 1.5TB of ingestion for $50,000, which would bring the potential total to $150,000 if the add-on is used. Those figures appear in the vendor quotation included in the county materials, according to the county's packet.
Privacy, guardrails and Colorado’s AI rulebook
Sheriff’s officials say TimePilot is meant to serve as an investigative aid with human oversight, not as an autonomous suspect finder quietly scanning the world in the background. The vendor promotes the platform as CJIS compliant, a security benchmark for criminal justice systems, as noted on Tranquility AI’s distributor page. The purchase also lands while Colorado continues to fine-tune statewide AI rules. Lawmakers previously pushed the law’s effective date to June 30, a delay that could shape disclosure requirements and liability for government agencies that deploy AI tools, according to CPR.
What happens next
With the commission’s approval in hand, the sheriff’s office can complete procurement, shift from pilot to subscription and start formal rollout and training. County staff told the Denver Gazette they expect investigators to use the platform across violent crime, fentanyl and organized crime cases while keeping an eye on how it affects case closure timelines.
