50 signatures reached
To: Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and The Illinois State Government
Unlock Police Body Camera Audio in Illinois
The government of Illinois should mandate that all police body camera audio files be automatically transcribed and analyzed to create police performance metrics.
These metrics should focus on:
1. De-Escalation
2. Respectfulness
3. Eliminating Racial Bias
4. Early Warnings
To institute a system that encourages positive performance in community engagement, federal funding should be dependent on a minimum set of police performance metrics being achieved.
Why is this important?
Illinois signed a law in place in 2015 that set statewide standards for police departments that use officer body cameras, but that measure stopped short of actually requiring them.
To make matters worse, less than 0.1% of police body camera video files are ever reviewed.
There is simply too much data for a human to automatically review. However, this data contains valuable insights that can be used to generate police performance metrics. The technology exists for these files to be scanned and analyzed to make reviews and reports an efficient and effective process.
Wearing body cameras alone is not enough to instill trust in law enforcement transparency. The audio data needs to be analyzed through natural language processing that can identify the areas police departments need to improve to build community approval levels.
How it will be delivered
We will hand-deliver to the Office of the Governor of Illinois and hold a recorded press conference.