The Burlington Police Department is the first police department in North Carolina to use artificial intelligence on body camera footage. The department’s partnership with Trueo is aimed at supporting police officers’ daily mobility. Truleo scans hundreds of hours of body camera footage and highlights key points.
Burlington Police Department Lt. Dalton Majors said Torleo has saved the Burlington Police Department millions of dollars, helping both victims and officers.
“There’s a lot of responsibility, not just on the Burlington Police Department, but also on the victims involved in the incident,” Majors said. “It’s really helpful to be able to see these things right away.”
We have been using Truleo successfully for the past few months since we started using it. He said that in past years, major teams did not have the ability to review dozens of body camera videos and did so on a quarterly basis.
Majors said one aspect of the tool that has been helpful is reviewing police actions. He said finding both good and bad activity by officers has led to overall growth in the department.
“I think they realized that instead of catching me doing something wrong, they were really catching me doing something good,” Majors said. . “We admire that and the director can watch that video and review them and their actions every day.”
While Truleo is expanding to larger cities like New York, co-founder Anthony Tassone said the main focus right now is to spread the aid across the U.S. and Canada. Truleo already has six divisions across Australia.
Tassone said the goal is to make life easier for departments that take too long to review body camera footage.
“I thought about the hundreds of millions of hours of body camera footage that remains unseen,” Tassone said. “Cities and ministries are spending billions of dollars just to protect these cameras and pay for their storage. It’s a real waste to know that 99% of these videos are never reviewed by anyone. I did.”
As smaller cities like Burlington take the lead in taking steps towards Torleo, Tassone said he is pleased to see these officials actively working on this new support.
“I’m really proud of Burlington College’s courage and their commitment to say, ‘Look, we’re going to set the standard of professionalism in this department, and anything that falls short of this standard will not be tolerated.’ “We’re working hard,” Tassone said. “I think that’s good for the profession.”
Majors said that with Truleo’s help, he quickly saw evidence that the tool was working in the wild. He said after viewing the officer’s body camera footage, he confirmed there was a safety issue for the officer during the action.
“They had the suspect enter the room unsupervised on a domestic violence call and we didn’t know what he was doing,” Majors said. “Although nothing happened as a result of the incident, we realized that it was a major learning moment for the officers.”
