Veritone Contact Launches to Streamline Transparency Reporting Initiatives and Enable Officers to Spend More Time Supporting Their Communities

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ: VERI), creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, announced today the launch of Veritone Contact, an automated software solution enabling California law enforcement agencies to systematically collect Racial Identity and Profiling Act (RIPA) compliant stop data. All California agencies are required to start collecting this information by January 1, 2022 and subsequently report it to the state’s Department of Justice by 2023.

With 70+ agencies already contracted, Veritone expects nearly 100 California law enforcement agencies to be using Veritone Contact on a daily basis to collect stop data and maintain compliance with the state’s RIPA legislation by early 2022. Agencies already familiar with Veritone Contact have found it to be at least 50% more efficient and easier to use than alternative solutions including the state’s own application. Based on this efficiency, nearly 300,000 hours of RIPA data collection labor will be eliminated, saving an estimated $30 million¹ in officer time annually.

By collecting detailed perceived demographic information during traffic and pedestrian stops, this transparency initiative aims to prevent racial profiling and bias, but can be time consuming for officers, keeping them from their primary patrol responsibilities.

According to a recent study, while there is strong support for anti-racism and unconscious bias training (44%), overwhelmingly people want officers spending their time responding to violent (84%) and non-violent (67%) crime, not performing administrative tasks such as producing reports. Moreover, 36% of people are in favor of increasing spending on technology that helps make police more transparent with the public and 32% support technology that allows officers to spend more time on patrol and less time on administrative paperwork. Veritone Contact helps deliver on all these key findings.

Built in conjunction with several city law enforcement agencies within the state, Veritone Contact also enables command staff to optionally collect additional information by adding custom questions into the application. These questions help to provide supplemental observations which can further assist with constituent transparency initiatives and officer training.

“Automation is crucial to improving police transparency and preserving public trust in law enforcement,” said Veritone Head of Government, Legal and Compliance Jon Gacek. “Veritone Contact has helped us greatly expand our presence within the California law enforcement community. As a result, we’re working with many of them now to improve their investigation and public record disclosure workflows with our redaction and evidence discovery solutions.”

“Our agency is under increased pressure to balance public transparency and preserve individual privacy,” said Captain Justin Murphy at Escondido, California Police Department. “Veritone Contact provides our officers with a simplified way to collect required observational data, and ensures we comply with the latest legislation. The technology helps us redirect countless hours of valuable time and resources to continue our most important job of maintaining public safety.”

Panel Discussion: Transparency in Law Enforcement and How Technology Can Help

On November 9, 2021 at 10AM Pacific / 1PM Eastern, Veritone and Microsoft will host a virtual panel discussion with law enforcement leaders from across the country discussing findings from Veritone’s recent “2021 US Law Enforcement Agency Trust & Transparency Report” as well as other related topics and what it all means for our nation’s law enforcement agencies and suggested next steps.

Law enforcement leaders on the panel include:

Chief Steven Casstevens, Buffalo Grove, IL PD (past IACP president)
Chief Jorge Cisneros, Anaheim, CA PD
Police Commissioner & Superintendent-in-Chief, William Gross, Boston, MA PD
Chief John Letteney, Thomasville, GA PD (incoming IACP president)

Veritone Contact works on any secure mobile device, mobile display terminal (MDT) in a patrol vehicle, or laptop allowing the swift collection of data on the scene and mitigating the risk of missed or inaccurate information.

For more information on Veritone’s Contact application for law enforcement, please visit https://veritone.com/applications/contact/.

About Veritone

Veritone (NASDAQ: VERI) is a leader in enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Serving organizations in both commercial and regulated sectors, Veritone’s software, services, and industry applications simplify data management, empowering the largest and most recognizable brands in the world to run more efficiently, accelerate decision making and increase profitability. Veritone’s hyper-expansive Enterprise AI platform, aiWARE™, orchestrates an ever-growing ecosystem of machine learning models to transform audio, video and other data sources into actionable intelligence. Through its robust partner ecosystem and professional and managed services, Veritone develops and builds AI solutions that solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

To learn more, visit Veritone.com.