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The Dallas City Council is expected to vote Wednesday on a contract for an early warning system to flag problematic officer behavior.
Police Chief U. Reneé Hall said Friday that the department’s current technology is lagging.
In an interview with Hall said police accountability was part of the REAL Change reforms she announced in the summer that included stating that officers have a duty to intervene in excessive-force cases and formalizing a ban on chokeholds.
The $907,485 contract with Benchmark Analytics would be for three years.
“The system that we have in place is a flawed system,” Hall said. “If the same person isn’t reviewing the behavior or aware of the behaviors, sometimes it can slip through the cracks. And I think that the early warning system will help us with that.”
The Minneapolis Police Department talked about using the same software following the May 25 death of George Floyd, but the funding fell through, according to an Associated Press report.
Derek Chauvin, who had worked for the Minneapolis department for almost 20 years and is charged in Floyd’s death, reportedly had a history of complaints and aggression.
In Dallas, Hall said, the Police Department’s current technology requires a supervisor to manually pull a report from an officer’s internal affairs history.
Dallas leaders announced policing policy changes in June following protests around the country over Floyd’s death.
Benchmark Analytics uses algorithms based on an officer’s reports, complaints and history.
According to the Benchmark Analytics website, its software aims to identify “officers exhibiting problematic behavior and flag areas in need of improvement — as well as provide them with a corrective action plan to get them back on track.”
It’s unclear how commanders would use the software to determine intervention or disciplinary actions.
Currently in the Dallas department, multiple divisions may review misconduct allegations, depending on their severity. Criminal allegations are handled by the public integrity unit, which was formed in 1992.
Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, expressed concern about how the early warning system would be used.
“A lot of times some of these initiatives sound progressive and proactive when brought up in theory,” he said. “But sometimes they are very counterproductive by labeling officers unjustly.”