A new Chicago startup is using natural language processing technology to help police departments analyze audio from body cameras, giving law enforcement agencies better insights into the interactions between officers and the public.
Truleo, founded this year, is a body camera audio analytics platform that helps police departments automatically sift through hours of footage to identify instances of positive and negative interactions by police officers. When the technology determines an officer has had a negative interaction with a civilian, the department can intervene and provide the proper training to the officer.
The idea, co-founder and CEO Anthony Tassone said, is to help build trust between law enforcement agencies and the public, give departments better data on officer interactions, and flag problem officers before a tragedy occurs. A negative interaction includes things like when an officer uses profanity, or when an officer's tone becomes disrespectful. Informalities like calling people "dude" or "bro" will also get flagged by Truleo's tech, Tassone said.
The startup's flagship customer is the Seattle Police Department, which has used Truleo for the last six months, Tassone said. Truleo is working with around a dozen other police departments on a pilot basis, with another half dozen expected by the end of the year. The startup has so far raised $2.5 million in seed funding.
Truleo's technology is based on the natural language processing platform in Tassone's previous business, GreenKey, which was used by Wall Street financial firms that wanted to analyze banker phone calls. The tech helped firms learn when customers were upset and identify strong salespeople. It was acquired by communications surveillance provider VoxSmart this year.
Tassone knew he wanted to pivot from Wall Street to law enforcement after witnessing the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
"Suddenly, what we were doing on Wall Street felt not very fulfilling," he said. "We realized the technology we were sitting on — although it was helping Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan make more money — we felt like there’s a bigger calling here."
The vast majority of police body camera footage never gets reviewed, Tassone, explained, with police departments typically only analyzing instances where there's a use of force or other major incident. With Truleo, departments have a tool that analyzes every police interaction and can flag a circumstance where an officer is acting out of line.
Most police interactions are positive, Tassone said, and departments can use Truleo to demonstrate that to the public. And when a negative interaction takes place, a department can identify that, intervene with training and other resources, and hopefully prevent an officer-involved shooting from taking place.
"[Police departments] view Truleo as the ability to create baseball card stats for cops, specifically around respectfulness and deescalation," Tassone said.
