From Elon Musk to Police Pursuits: The Journey of a Software Engineer to Create an AI Startup for Law Enforcement.

This year, Daniel Francis, the founder of Abel, experienced an unusual event while traveling in a car at 135 miles per hour on a highway in Oakland, California. The driver, a police officer, had a gun in his lap. This trip was not part of his usual routine, as Francis had been accompanying officers on their patrols as part of his research for his company, which develops artificial intelligence to facilitate police report writing. Typically, these experiences are quite calm, but that day, the officer stopped a man for a vehicle check. Cornered, the man hit the gas and nearly ran over someone, triggering an intense chase. Francis recalled with excitement, “I was so thrilled. Finally, something real was happening and not just a report about a stolen car!”

After 40 minutes of a dangerous pursuit, the fugitive's car ran out of gas and stopped. The officer looked visibly shaken, and Francis felt his heart racing. During the chase, he reflected on how artificial intelligence could assist in drafting the pursuit report. “That’s one of the hardest reports to write,” he remarked, noting the complexity of detailing each street and turn during the chase.

Throughout 20 rides with the police, Francis has pondered how AI can reduce the written workload for law enforcement. His company, Abel, utilizes footage from body cameras and dispatch data to streamline the creation of police reports, which are often time-consuming. Recently, Francis announced that Abel has secured a $5 million seed funding round, led by Day One Ventures, with participation from Long Journey Ventures and support from Y Combinator as part of the summer 2024 batch. The funds will be used to hire engineers and continuously improve Abel's artificial intelligence.

Francis’s name may sound familiar; during the mass layoffs at Twitter in 2023, he jokingly pretended to be a disgruntled engineer online and surprisingly ended up being hired by Twitter. Comparing experiences, he expressed that working for Elon Musk is much more stressful than riding along with an officer during a chase.

Francis's transition from social media to police technology was driven by a series of challenging events. In 2022, he helped a friend escape an abusive marriage by secretly relocating her to a new home in the middle of the night. "It was the most moving thing I’ve done in years,” he recalled. However, after his friend was located, her husband began to threaten her at her new house, leading Francis to wonder about the slow police response; it took the police about 45 minutes to arrive. This prompted him to investigate how police stations were severely understaffed and discover that report writing can take so long that officers spend one third of their shifts on paperwork.

Francis became obsessed with the idea that new artificial intelligence models could shorten this process. He created an initial prototype of Abel using body cam videos that he filmed himself, dramatizing minor crimes with friends. Currently, Abel is already being used in the Richmond, California police department, where officers have reconfigured their schedules to analyze reports at the end of their shifts, thanks to Abel preparing a first draft.

Abel is not the only venture in this field; there is competition such as Axon, which has developed a product called Draft One, and smaller startups like Policereports.ai. Francis hopes Abel will help alleviate the bureaucratic burden for police officers. "It's much better for everyone if officers aren’t overloaded," he noted, “if they can focus on the job they signed up for.”