Lancashire Constabulary is investigating the idea of enabling citizens to use their Amazon Echo devices to report crimes, according to the Daily Mail.

Rob Flanagan, Lancashire Constabularys innovation lead, hit upon the idea after experimenting with the digital voice assistant to read nursery rhymes to his daughter. In its first iteration, the Echo will be used to deliver daily Flash Briefing-style crime bulletins to local residents, covering everything from the types of offence being committed in their area to the current location of the helicopter. The Alexa Skill to enable this will launch later this month.

The force also wants to use Alexa for internal briefings to update officers on anything from a terrorist attack to a prisoner being taken into custody. And the force is investigating whether an Echo, connected to a voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service, which responds to the name Alexa, could be used by citizens to report crimes.