Castle Shannon police department using new body camera technology that analyzes footage

CASTLE SHANNON, Pa. — The Castle Shannon Police Department is the first in Pennsylvania to utilize a new body camera technology that analyzes footage.

“It’s all in the interest of transparency and accountability,” said Chief Kenneth Truver.

The software, called “Truleo,” accesses police footage from a secured cloud, then uses artificial intelligence to transcribe police interactions and categorize the conduct.

“Officers generate enormous amounts of footage, somewhere between 20 to 30 hours per officer, per month,” said Truleo CEO and co-founder Anthony Tassone. “Less than 0.01% of the videos are ever watched.”

With Truleo, law enforcement leaders can easily sort through footage depending on features they’ve selected.

“We allow different departments to customize these features ... in terms of risk and professionalism,” Tassone said. “Risk is usually profanity, threats and insults, and then professionalism is using formalities ... it’s collecting civilian gratitude.”

Truver showed us a sample of the collected data, which rated an officer’s professionalism within the community by several measures: offering an explanation, answering a question or showing empathy.

He said the technology “looks for anomalies, looks for good things ... catching officers doing something right, and looks for risky behavior, maybe a use of force incident or a pursuit, things that we should be looking at a little more closely.”

Tassone said the results essentially create “baseball card stats for cops.”

Truleo launched about a year ago and is being utilized by about a dozen police departments across the country.

The software is best suited with Axon-brand body cameras and trials are being offered, according to the company.

Castle Shannon police are receiving the software free of charge for the time being, while offering feedback to assist with the product development.

“We think this is the future of policing,” Tassone said.

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