As entrepreneur Stephen Dodge watched last week's protests against police brutality and racial inequality unfold across the country, he wondered how he could use his talents and connections in tech to move the needle forward.
Richmond Inno caught up with Dodge just last week to discuss his company Regulr and their new project, the Distance app. Dodge has been busy assembling a team of tech friends at Regulr and now-business partner Kevin Dublin to take immediate action and address the current crisis the best way they know how --- through technology.
Dodge and Dublin are now deep into their newest project: an app called commUNITE (pronounced "community.")
"We have some issues that need to be resolved," Dodge said. "Watching [the protests] unfold and shed light on [law enforcement] issues last week made me think about how we always find out about these incidences after the fact, but we can't seem to get this information quicker and see these events in real-time."
Dodge and Dublin are working to get commUNITE, a real-time app that allows bystanders to record instances of police brutality and live-stream these events to superiors at police departments around the country, off the ground.
"When you have the resources and the ability to change something you have to act," Dodge said. "I'd be doing myself and my [team] and all people a disservice if I didn't team up [on this project] and put my actions into play."
The idea is that by using AI and machine learning, the app would analyze a scene of police violence to confirm the presence of inappropriate force. Using geolocation technology, the app would then determine which police department had jurisdiction, and within seconds superiors at the local police station could have access to the live-stream of potential excessive use of force. Leaders at the department could then directly communicate with the police officer and order them to change tactics.
"Our goal, at the end of the day, is to save a life."
Police departments would need to opt-in to participate in such a system, and the team is currently looking for local police departments or government entities to partner and be an early adopter of the technology.
Dodge is acting as the leader of the tech side of the app's development, while Dublin has taken up a marketing manager/creative director role.
"As a black man in America, I've witnessed police brutality and systemic racism head-on," Dublin said. "Stephen and I first became friends in Richmond, where we bonded over sports, culture and technology. With this project, we both have the same end goal: to hold police accountable in the best way we know how, which is [through] technology."
The project's team of developers has already built out a tech framework to identify what is necessary to make something like this a reality. But the real challenge, the pair said, is the need for funding in order to develop some of the higher-level tech associated with the app.
"I think the app can be done within our goal, but the second phase, where the real impact is with AI and machine learning, will really need some funding," Dodge said.
The team has a current goal of raising $10,000 and has opened a GoFundMe for the project. In the first 30 hours of the page being live, it had already raised half of that goal. As of Monday, the GoFundMe had raised just shy of $7,000.
"Ideally we could get this up within 90 days, but we really have to take our time to get this right so that the platform doesn't produce false positives," Dodge said. "Our goal, at the end of the day, is to save a life."
