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After a years-old public disclosure request triggered a complaint against an officer, many at the Seattle Police Department (SPD) now suspect the city used artificial intelligence (AI) to fish for policy violations. As troubling, they believe the complaint was intended to influence a separate investigation. But the city says the timing of the complaint is little more than a coincidence and that it doesn’t use AI in this capacity.

In June 2024, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) investigated an SPD officer for use of force against a combative suspect after an out-of-context video went viral. A day after that video was reported in the media, Rebecca Boatright鈥擲PD鈥檚 general counsel and executive director of analytics and research鈥攆iled a separate complaint against the same officer for an incident on July 31, 2020. It alleged bias-policing.

According to the complaint, the Seattle officer mocked a radio commercial for the SEIU. It happened when he was alone in his patrol vehicle, with his body camera accidentally turned on. But how did Boatright learn of this fleeting incident? And why was it only reported nearly two months after she learned of it?

What was the complaint against the Seattle officer?

The commercial claimed medical executives wanted to suspend caregivers’ retirement contributions as a way to save money. The commercial said that, “Suspending retirement contributions to shore up profit margins and dole out millions to highly paid executives will hit people of color the hardest.”

The officer then mocked the claim, repeating it to himself with commentary: “Gotta hit those people of color the hardest. We gotta hit those people of color.”

According to the OPA investigation, which did not sustain the complaints for bias policing and undermining public trust, the officer “made this statement in a noticeably changed pitch and inflection from his baseline speaking pitch.”

“I didn鈥檛 know I was being recorded. I鈥檓 talking to myself in private parroting what was said on a commercial. Any reasonable human being will watch this video and put them鈥攂e able to put themselves in my shoes instantly and know, it means nothing it鈥檚 flow of consciousness or whatever. It鈥檚 unreasonable to think that anybody would be offended,” the officer said to the OPA.

How did anyone know this incident occurred?

Boatright reported the incident to OPA, apparently based on a public disclosure request (PDR) made in November 2023. PDRs are formal petitions filed with government agencies to obtain access to records and information that are open to the public. That includes body-worn-camera footage.

The video was two hours and 42 minutes long and the incident occurred over mere seconds. How could a PDR of a private incident accidentally recorded five years earlier of a cop talking to himself suddenly catch the attention of the city? It’s why Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) president Officer Mike Solan says he and his members were initially suspicious about the complaint and its timing.

“It leads one to conclude that there’s some shenanigans happening,” Solan explained in an exclusive interview with “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

A history with AI

Solan says SPOG members are deeply suspicious the complaint was a result of AI software used to comb through video for possible violations.

“How in the world did they [the city] learn of somebody randomly talking to themselves, mocking a radio ad, captured on a three-hour long, unintentional body worn video activation, recording everything they do?” Solan asked. “And then you mean to tell me that a week after a viral use of course, involving that same employee, that this case randomly appears? It’s hard to believe, and it sounds to me like more of the same. Of doing things behind our backs in fear of the accountability activist class who beat the loud drum all the time.”

Both to SPOG and its members, the distrust comes from the city of Seattle’s use of Truleo AI software.

Sowing seeds of distrust

Truleo was quietly acquired and secretly used to analyze body camera footage to find bias incidents or other potentially inappropriate actions by Seattle police. The city had been using it for roughly two years when it .

SPOG and members viewed the use of Truelo as spying on officers, and fishing for reasons to discipline them. They were critical of using software that cannot differentiate effectively on tone or cadence. Can it tell the difference between an officer reading a quote from a suspect or witness, telling a joke, or, say, mocking a radio commercial?

After news coverage and SPOG criticism, the city said it stopped using Truleo. The software’s biggest advocate? It appeared to be Loren Atherley, director of performance analytics and research for the SPD. According to the SPD, Atherley thought the technology had “a lot of promise.”

Atherley reports to Boatright, who submitted the complaint against the officer privately mocking the SEIU commercial. Truleo was in place when the original PDR was submitted for the officer’s bodycam.

What happened exactly?

How, exactly, did this five-year-old, private utterance to a radio commercial catch someone’s attention in 2023?

It was part of a larger PDR request for something completely unrelated to the officer’s unintentional triggering of his body cam. Often, activists or journalists will submit expansive requests hoping they’ll find something. This officer was caught up in it but not targeted.

But how did it lead to a complaint from Boatright so many years later? Some police believe retroactively mined all PDRs for this officer, then fed OPA the juiciest snippet to influence the use-of-force investigation. Other Seattle police officers believe the city went on a fishing expedition, using software to comb through hours of body cam footage looking for policy violations.

But the city says that’s not what happened and provided proof.

The city weighs in

On April 18, 2024, a civilian SPD manager in the legal division emailed Boatright to offer “a heads up on some potentially embarrassing audio” that was scheduled to be released in the PDR in several months. It provided a link to the video. This means the use of AI to fish for complaints was unlikely.

But Boatright didn’t respond until June 5, 2024, according to an email thread provided by SPD to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH. She asked that the video be referred to OPA, at her direction.

News of the officer caught up in the viral video was reported less than 24 hours before Boatright asked for the OPA complaint to be filed. Why did she wait so long to file the complaint if it wasn’t triggered by the officer being in the news?

Why did it take so long to report the video to OPA?

Boatright, via SPD, claims that her concern over the video was initially brought to then-SPD chief Adrian Diaz, but it sat with him until after his departure. Then, it was brought up with [interim chief] Sue Rahr, who apparently gave the green light to forward it to OPA.

Diaz, however, explained to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH that he has no recollection of this incident being brought to him by Boatright. He says he is consistent in how he responds when complaints are brought to his attention.

“Anytime a complaint comes to me, I tell them to send it over to OPA. If they feel like there’s a policy violation, I tell them to send it over to OPA,” he explained.

Coincidence or attempt to pile on the officer after the bus stop complaint?

The concerns over AI use, in this particular case, seem unwarranted鈥攖hough understandable, given the history with Truleo.

“While I look forward to the day when we can use AI to make the search for responsive records more efficient, no AI was used to locate this video and we do not currently use AI to locate video,” Boatright explained to SPD Chief Shon Barnes this month, presumably addressing officer concerns and rumors. “Moreover, when we are able to use AI in a search capacity, it will be limited exclusively on our end to locating records responsive to legal requests; the Legal Section has neither the time nor the interest to randomly fish through records.”

But given the timing鈥攁n obscure five-year-old video clip that was never published, suddenly triggering a complaint right after a viral use-of-force video鈥攎any SPD officers smell a setup. They suspect the second complaint was timed to pile on the officer and influence OPA鈥檚 decision. If that was the intent, it didn’t work. The officer was give a over the viral use-of-force video.

Solan says he hopes that officers’ suspicions aren’t proven true.

SPOG is looking into this incident to learn more information, noting that the city must be transparent about how this occurred because, “on the face of it, without an explanation… this is what appears to be a problem.”

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