The Burlington Police Department is the first station in North Carolina to use artificial intelligence in its body camera footage. The department’s partnership with Truleo is meant to help officers on their daily routes. Truleo scans hundreds of hours of body camera footage and highlights key points.
Captain Dalton Majors of the Burlington Police Department said Truleo has saved Burlington Police Department millions of dollars and is helping both victims and officers.
“There's a lot of liability around those not just for the Burlington Police Department, but also for the victims associated with the incidents,” Majors said. “Being able to look at those things at a fingertip quickly helps us.”
Having started its use with Truleo, these past few months have shown success with the aid. In past years, Majors said they did not have the ability to look at dozens of body camera videos and did quarterly checks.
Majors said one aspect of this tool that has been helpful is reviewing the actions of officers. He said finding both the good and the bad officer activity has helped the overall department grow as a whole.
“I think that they have found that it's not a catch me doing something wrong, it's really catch me doing something good,” Majors said. “We get to praise that and reaffirm that behavior with them daily as the supervisor looks through that video.”
With Truleo making its way to big cities like New York, co-founder Anthony Tassone said his main focus as of now is to spread this aid all throughout the United States and Canada. Truleo has already spread throughout Australia with six departments.
Tassone said his goal is to make things easier for the departments that find body camera footage takes too long to look through.
“I thought about the hundred million plus hours of body camera footage that just goes unseen,” Tassone said. “Cities and departments spend an enormous amount of money just to secure these cameras, to pay for the storage. I thought that was a real waste to learn that 99% of these videos will never be reviewed by anyone.”
With smaller cities, such as Burlington, taking the initiative to take the step towards Truleo, Tassone said he is pleased that these officers are willing to take on this new aid.
“I'm really proud of Burlington's courage and their commitment to say, ‘Look, we're going to set a standard at this department of professionalism and behavior below this standard won't be tolerated,’” Tassone said. “I think that's good for the profession.”
With Truleo’s help, Majors said he has seen proof of this tool at work right away. After watching an officer’s body camera footage, he said he identified an officer safety issue in action.
“They let a suspect go into a room unsupervised on a domestic violence call, not knowing what the intentions were,” Majors said. “Nothing happened from the incident, but it was a big learning moment for officers to realize.”