Earlier this year, Abel founder Daniel Francis was traveling 135 miles per hour on a freeway in Oakland, California. The driver was a police officer and had a gun in his lap.
Francis had made a habit of riding shotgun with police officers in the name of research for his company, which develops AI to fill out police reports. The ride is usually pretty uneventful. But on that day, officers had stopped the man and searched the vehicle. The man was surprised and stepped on the accelerator, almost hitting someone. Francis and the police set off in pursuit of him. “I was so excited,” Francis recalled. “Finally, I thought it was happening! Finally, stolen car phones aren't the only place we go to fill out reports.”
Forty minutes later, and after a dangerous final act through the narrow streets of the Oakland Hills, the man's car ran out of gas and came to a screeching halt. The officer was visibly sweating. Francis' heart pounded. But between nearly missing a parked car and swerving onto the freeway, Francis had time to think about AI. Specifically, how would an AI create a police report for a car chase? “This is one of the most difficult reports to write,” he said. “When you write a tracking report, you have to list all the side streets and turns you took. Those reports are huge.”
In his 20 police ride-alongs, Francis has spent a lot of time thinking about how AI can reduce police red tape. His company, Abel, develops AI that uses body camera footage and dispatch call data to create police reports, which are typically time-consuming. He announced Thursday that Abel has raised $5 million in a seed round led by Day One Ventures with participation from Long Journey Ventures and support from Y Combinator as part of the Summer 2024 class. Francis plans to use the funding to hire engineers to continue improving Abel's AI.
Some of you may know the name Francis. When Musk tried to fire thousands of Twitter employees in 2023, Francis playfully pretended to be a disgruntled Twitter engineer online and ended up getting hired as one. (Incidentally, Francis said working under a mask is far more stressful than sitting shotgun in a car chase.) “When Elon yells at me, it's scary,” he laughed. )
Francis' pivot from social media to police technology was prompted by a series of unfortunate events. In 2022, Frances helped her best friend escape an abusive marriage and secretly moved her and her child into a new home in the middle of the night. “It was probably the most exciting thing I've done in years,” Francis said. “Help my friend escape under the cover of darkness.”
But then her husband found her new address. “He came and banged on the door and shouted threats,” he said. “This happened several times and each time it took about 45 minutes for Oakland police to arrive.”
Francis was shocked at how long it took for police to arrive. He interviewed police officers, many of whom told him how woefully understaffed the police department was. We also found that it can take 45 minutes to write a police report, and that police spend about a third of their time writing reports and other documents. “This number changed my life,” Francis said. “That's an insane use of time.”
He became obsessed with how new AI models could reduce the time he spent writing reports. He created the first Abel demo using homemade body camera footage, role-playing misdemeanors such as littering with friends. “We've done enough demo videos that we're aware of all the misdemeanors that don't involve bystanders,” he said.
Abel is currently being used by police in Richmond, California (and Francis has access to real body camera footage). He said local police officers have changed their work schedules around Abel. Instead of pulling to the side of the road to spend 40 minutes writing a report, he could save it until the end of the day and just edit the first draft that Abel had already written. I prepared.
Abel isn't the only one working on AI police reports. Competitors range from Axon (maker of Tasers and body cameras) with its Draft One product to smaller startups like Policereports.ai.
Francis hopes Abel will make the police's paperwork easier. “It's much better for everyone if officers aren't overworked and don't get burned out,” he said. “If they can actually show up and do the job they were contracted to do.”