The NYPD has launched a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to analyze police body-worn camera footage and evaluate individual officers’ on-the-job professionalism.
The police department signed a contract for the program with Truleo, a Chicago-based tech company that processes body camera videos, according to a statement on the company’s crowdfunding website dated Oct. 13.
Truleo says its mission is to “improve trust in the police” by analyzing hours of body camera footage and classifying officers as “professional” or “unprofessional.”
“When body cameras were rolled out to the 18,000 departments in the U.S., they were meant to usher in a new era of police trust,” Truleo’s mission statement reads. “But trust in the police has not increased… in part because less than 1% of the videos are ever reviewed. Each year 100 million hours of video are sitting in the cloud untouched.”
Truleo analyzes audio recordings from police body cameras and transcribes conversations between officers and civilians, labeling an officer’s language as “insult,” “profanity,” “threat” — or, alternatively, “explanation” or “gratitude.” The technology also labels notable moments during an interaction, such as “arrest,” “frisk” or “use of force.”
Truleo’s software then scores an interaction as “professional” or “unprofessional.”
“Our technology will automatically detect critical events such as uses of force pursuits, frisks and noncompliance incidents,” the company’s statement announcing the new NYPD contract read. “It will also screen for both professional and unprofessional office language so supervisors can then praise or review officers’ conduct.”
The department is entering a pilot program to assess the technology’s effectiveness in improving internal supervision and accountability, a spokesperson for the NYPD wrote in a statement to Gothamist. The spokesperson would not say how many officers would be…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply