Aurora Police Department getting new AI system to review bodycam footage
Thousands of hours of body camera videos are recorded by Aurora police officers every month. A majority of that goes unseen.
"We got to spend a lot of our taxpayer dollars gathering this data collecting this data we should work just as diligently in analyzing the data," Interim Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
Acevedo says it's a missed opportunity and believes the use of artificial intelligence is the key to fixing that.
"We will be able to in a matter of an hour be able to review the outcomes of hundreds of hours of video," he said.
The department is planning to contract with the company Truelo, which Acevedo used to work for. He says because the discussions started before he arrived, the city felt there was no conflict.
"They said 'you don't have to cut your ties as long as you are not involved,' but I didn't want any suggestions that there was personal gain, so I disinvested from the company," he said.
Truelo provides automated review and analysis of body camera video using keywords and phrases. The computer uses that to help identify both professional behavior and flag concerning activity and creates an ongoing report card for the officer.
The system uses voice analysis -- something their old system didn't have.
"It actually analyzes it for you using AI, then it prepares the report, the system identifies what it believes to be professional conduct or says 'here's some risky conduct,'" Acevedo said.
But there are concerns, starting with the rollout.
"Stakeholding is important when we change policy, when we change procedure, when we implement new technology, and that stakeholding, at the very least, should have been done with the officers who they are intending to have use this technology," said Anaya Robinson, senior Policy Strategist for the ACLU Colorado. "But it also needs to be done with the community."
"I think there's civil liberties concerns, there's privacy concerns, there's concerns of misuse for surveillance," he added.
Robinson also raised the same question we did about the efficiency of the technology.
"Are you worried at all though that we're putting a lot of trust into a technology that doesn't have a lot of history?" CBS News Colorado reporter Karen Morfitt asked Acevedo.
"Look there's no such thing as perfection, right? It just doesn't exist. But remember, whatever it tells you, you have to go confirm it," he responded. "There's still a human element to it."
Acevedo sees the new system as a step toward better transparency on all fronts.
"Quite honestly, I think it's going to be a game changer," he said.
RELATED: New policy and new tech rolled out for reviewing Aurora police body cam videos
The cost for the program alone for the year, Acevedo says, is somewhere around $200,000 and they will try and get out of that first program we shared with you a few weeks ago.
While there are other agencies across the country using it, Aurora Police Department would be the first in Colorado.
