Porterville Police Department Joins Growing List of California Law Enforcement Agencies Successfully Utilizing Veritone Contact to Meet California AB 953 Racial and Identity Profiling Act Requirements
Agencies report over 50% more efficiency than alternative solutions including the state’s own application
Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ: VERI), creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, today announced that the Porterville Police Department is now successfully utilizing its intelligent stop data collection and reporting application Veritone Contact to meet the stringent requirements of the California AB 953 Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) which, rolling out in waves since July 2018, went into full effect for over 500 California Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) January 1, 2022. Based on statistics and testimonials from agency personnel including police officers currently using the intelligent field application, Veritone Contact has the potential to save the agency significant time in RIPA data collection, which translates into more financial savings annually.
“Reporting has long been a time-consuming process for police on patrol and only exacerbated by the new RIPA requirements,” said Jon Gacek, general manager, aiWARE Enterprise for Veritone. “Nonetheless, the legislation is not intended to further burden LEAs but to promote transparency, which is why more police officers are finding Veritone Contact an invaluable and time-saving tool that’s easy to use. Porterville will not only alleviate the challenges of reporting but also ensure the kind of transparency necessary to keep the trust of citizens.”
Developed in collaboration with key California state and city agencies, Veritone Contact is a first-of-its-kind solution that addresses the public’s call for greater transparency while providing law enforcement with the tools they need to both ensure the legal rights of citizens are upheld and meet the obligations of new legislation. The app works with smartphones, tablets, in-vehicle mobile display terminals (MDTs) and laptops that can connect securely to the agency’s network using a standard web browser. Officers can quickly complete stop data collection by selecting easy, multi-select answer picklists, with no manual typing needed or handwritten forms to complete. Veritone Contact can also be customized with additional questions at the discretion of the agency and for their own initiatives. Records management teams can batch-review all officer reports. Easy-to-understand visual dashboards provide command staff with a preview of all aggregated stop data information for analysis and potential corrective actions. Secure delivery of stop data to California Department of Justice using 256-bit encryption can be performed on any desired schedule.
LEAs also may be eligible for reimbursement of costs associated with Veritone Contact and other RIPA implementation expenses. Agencies can learn important information, key tips and best practices for getting reimbursement for all things related to their RIPA program by accessing the on-demand webinar “RIPA Compliance, Reimbursement, & Funding – Did You Get All Your Paperwork Straight?”
“The Porterville Police Department holds some of the most professional, loyal and hard-working individuals dedicated to providing a vibrant and safe community where people will want to visit, businesses will want to locate, and families will want to raise their children,” said Porterville Chief of Police Jake Castellow. “As part of this commitment, we strive for the best-in-class tools and technology to ensure we meet RIPA requirements. Veritone Contact has it all.”
While laws requiring LEAs to collect detailed perceived demographic information during traffic or pedestrian stops have been enacted in several other states since 1999, California is leading the recent push with the enactment of Assembly Bill 953, which has the most comprehensive requirements in the nation. Many agencies are finding state-provided or other third-party stop data collection applications to be time-consuming and laborious and are now switching to Veritone Contact.
“Command staffs across California—and the country—uniformly want their officers interacting with their communities, keeping our cities and neighborhoods safe,” Gacek adds. “We’ve designed Veritone Contact to give agencies the ability to do more with the collected data beyond just fulfilling reporting requirements under RIPA. The data collected over time can help identify trends within the agency or community and inform officer training needs, support agency transparency initiatives with the community and other purposes. As more states pass stop data collection legislation, Veritone Contact has the potential to vastly improve law enforcement trust as well as attitudes about the role of police nationally and in local communities.”
More than 20 percent of the state’s LEAs are benefiting from Veritone Contact, with reports consistent that the application is far easier to use and more efficient by at least 50 percent than the solution the state provided.
To learn more, visit https://www.veritone.com/industries/justice/
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.
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