Truleo's anchor customer, Seattle police, dropped its body-cam AI pilot after press

Truleo is a Chicago startup whose AI analyses body-cam footage for audio clues to officer behaviour, so departments can correct problems through training before they escalate.

Truleo, founded in 2021, grew out of a platform first developed to analyse phone calls and text messages between Wall Street bankers. It reached out to SPD's director of performance analytics and research, Loren Atherley, in 2021, and Seattle became an 'anchor customer' for a technology demonstration project.

SPD said the technology had 'sufficient promise to attempt a limited pilot, to validate functionality', though it was 'too early in the process to speak to measurable outcomes'. A week after GeekWire's report, the department discontinued the project 'in light of reactions to the recent Axios and GeekWire articles', declining to elaborate on what the reactions were or from whom.

The pilot is discontinued and there is no plan to re-engage, SPD said — while leaving open that it 'might someday re-engage with Truleo'. Truleo's other identified customers continue.

The anchor-customer logo meant little: SPD was still only validating functionality when the coverage arrived and killed the project.

The department's stated reason — unspecified reactions to articles — shows procurement sensitivity outran the product's promise.

Truleo's mission framing, improving trust in police via analytics, makes media scrutiny a permanent part of its sales cycle.

Police-tech startups sell to institutions whose politics they don't control: a pilot can be killed by coverage alone, so anchor customers are fragile until outcomes are on record.

As of February 2023, SPD had no plan to re-engage Truleo while allowing it might someday return; Truleo's other public customers, including Alameda, Atwater and Vallejo and departments in three more states, remained.