Mabel R. ActonPITTSBURGH (KDKA) — New body camera technology that analyzes footage is being touted as the future of policing.
Police officers in Castle Shannon are the first in Pennsylvania to use the technology. Truleo software accesses police footage from a secured cloud and uses artificial intelligence to transcribe police interactions and categorize conduct.
“Being professional, transparent and accountable to the citizens, I think this will do nothing but helps us,” Castle Shannon Police Chief Kenneth Truvo said.
Right now, only a handful of law enforcement agencies in the western part of the country use Truleo.
Experts said officers generate somewhere between 20 to 25 hours of video a month and less than .01 percent of videos are ever watched. With Truleo, agencies can easily sort through footage and key on instances where an officer displays professionalism or risky behavior.
Truvo’s department has been using the software since March. He showed KDKA-TV a snapshot of recently collected data that rates an officer’s interaction with the community.
He said since the department began using it, there has been no negative behavior by his officers flagged.
“We can calculate levels of professionalism and levels of empathy, gratitude,” Truleo CEO and co-founder Anthony Tassone. “We can also detect risky officer language, which is typically profanity, insults, threats, essentially rude and escalated behavior.”
“We’re not certainly looking to catch our officers doing anything wrong,” Truvo said. “That couldn’t be further from the goal of this program. It’s more about accountability, and we’re going to prove we are as good as we say we are.”
Other police departments in the area have also shown interest in getting the technology. Castle Shannon is getting the new software for free right now while providing feedback to the company.
