Body camera technology may detect bad behavior of officers before situations escalate

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- A crime-fighting camera from above and police body-worn cameras captured the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Each punch, kick, and blow delivered by officers was captured on camera. But it's not until we have a Tyre Nichols do most people see what's captured on body cam.

"Most cities spend a lot of money on body cameras and for the storage, but they actually watch less than 1% of the videos," said Anthony Tassone. He is the founder and CEO of Truleo, an artificial intelligence technology company that's helping law enforcement agencies across the country monitor body camera footage for both bad behavior and positive interactions with the community.

He said this technology could have alerted Memphis police to the actions of the officers involved well before Nichols was beaten.

"Those five officers in Memphis, those guys didn't wake up that day and decide to murder Tyre. They made hundreds of decisions over the course of their career that led them down that path. So that's a culture that developed that wasn't supervised. And so tool, like Truleo was designed to give the command staff and the sergeants greater visibility into what their officers are up to every day."

Tassone gave ABC11 a look at how the technology works. It analyzes the audio of the officer's body camera, not the footage to prevent any biases. "We don't measure cadence, tone volume. We don't do any of that. Because a disrespectful officer can be loud, they can be quiet. So we were really careful to just stick to the language that they use," he continued.

The program picks up the language of officers and civilians, detects the use of force, civilian complaints, and non-compliance. It can also detect insults, threats, and profanity from an officer or a civilian. "And that really allows us to detect and measure the amount of risk that's going on within this call, or the amount of professionalism and our mission is to, you know, increase trust in the police," Tassone continued.

This is critical in the case of the five former Memphis officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. When the officer's cameras went black the audio was still recorded.

"Even though they covered their body cameras or in some instances, they fell off, remember, you could hear everything. The audio was there. Truleo would have detected that event. More importantly, Truleo would have detected the hundreds of events before that. The officer's deterioration in professionalism that led up to the brutal tragic beating of Tyre."

The technology has been adopted in police departments in California, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Florida. But not here in North Carolina. Tassone said there is some apprehension with some departments.

"It's coming at a time where police departments are spread thin. The chiefs worried about morale, and whether camera analytics is going to be considered Big Brother. And so we have to do a lot of education to say, you know, look, the analytics is going to help good officers separate themselves from bad apples. "

Seattle Police Department has adopted the program and said it's too early to measure the outcomes, but does look forward to data-driven policing.