Quick take:
Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner has expressed interest in using artificial intelligence tools to review additional body camera footage after a former Eugene police officer was widely condemned for making racist comments captured on body camera footage. But according to a memo from the police union, the issue appears to be headed toward negotiation.
Discussions have begun within the Eugene Police Department about the possibility of using artificial intelligence to review footage from body-worn cameras to identify offensive comments made by officers.
“We have a product that EPD can demonstrate and may do so in the near future,” police spokeswoman Melinda McLaughlin said in an email Wednesday, June 17.
The discussion comes in the wake of Eugene Police Officer Martin Schiller’s resignation on May 9 after body camera video was released showing him making racist remarks.
Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner said the Eugene police union will also be involved in discussions about AI technology.
The Eugene Police Officers Association previously signed a memorandum of understanding in February 2025, effective until June of next year, which states, “The city and the association agree not to use artificial intelligence (AI) to investigate or allege misconduct by officers.”
Michael Cruz, a Eugene police officer and the organization’s president, referred questions to EPEA’s other leader, Matt Gross, also an EPD officer.
“The Secretary and I have not yet had an opportunity to discuss this matter in detail, so I don’t have much to add at this time,” Gross said in an email. Mr. Gross is the organization’s legislative chair.
“EPEA has a long history of working with command staff to evaluate, negotiate and implement policies to best serve the citizens of Eugene,” Gross said. “We expect this policy to follow a similar collaborative process and look forward to its discussions.”
Use of body camera
The cameras worn by Eugene police officers are not always on.
But the policy requires the feature to be turned on in a variety of scenarios, including all types of traffic stops (including pedestrians), “investigative encounters” with witnesses or people reporting crimes or suspects, when someone is in custody, and when officers have “reasonable suspicion” or probable cause that the person they are approaching is or has been involved in criminal activity.
Police officers are also given discretion by policy to record other street encounters and turn on cameras, for example when transporting people not in police custody.
“Body camera activation is not necessarily manual,” Skinner said at the May 14 Police Commission meeting. “It automatically kicks in when certain things happen.”
Cameras from technology supplier Axon typically turn on when they are near a police car with its siren activated or when an officer fires a Taser.
“That’s also why we record inadvertently,” Skinner said May 14.
EPD policy states that officers must upload body camera video at the end of each shift and make audio and video available within the department.
union negotiations
Skinner said in a June 11 interview that it’s “not unusual” for unions to say “as technology comes along, we don’t use it indiscriminately as a citation and no-citation fishing expedition for wrongdoing.”
He said he did not know the intentions behind the memorandum of understanding agreement signed by Deputy Commissioner Sean Adams until he retired late last year.
The approximately 70-word agreement with EPEA states in its entirety: “The City and the Association agree not to use artificial intelligence (AI) in allegations or investigations of employee misconduct.
“AI is an emerging technology that has the ability to significantly speed up almost any work function. However, both sides agree that it is inappropriate to use this technology in a Professional Standards Authority controlled environment.”
“This MOU will expire at 23:59 on June 30, 2027.”
Skinner talked about how negotiations could occur before introducing such technology.
“We don’t think it’s an appropriate use of technology to go looking for things that haven’t yet come to our attention,” Skinner told Lookout. “I think you can say ‘yes’ to something because you can put safeguards in place for that. Unions want to know that. They want to get rid of the bad apples, too.”
But “with that memorandum, we’re going to have to have those discussions and negotiate the implications,” Skinner said.
McLaughlin said police do not currently use artificial intelligence for reporting or investigation purposes.
Skinner said it will also follow a citywide AI policy.
A City of Eugene spokesperson said in an email Thursday that the city’s AI “policy and governance framework” is being worked on by a “team of staff.” The city has issued some guidance for employees that allows them to use a limited number of approved software tools, such as MICrosoft Copilot Chat.
Gross said the February 2025 memorandum “was created as the City of Eugene established a citywide policy on the use of AI, specifically directing employees to use Copilot over other products such as ChatGPT or Grok to better protect potentially sensitive information.”
public discussion
Schiller’s comments and subsequent resignation sparked a heated debate among members of the City of Eugene’s Citizens Advisory Committee about the department’s response.
The department hired Schiller in January 1999 after working as an employee in Utah.
During a Jan. 30 phone conversation about cruise vacation travel options, Schiller can be heard asking, “Where do black people go, Carnival or?”
As the person on the other end of the phone conversation began to answer, Schiller said, “They can’t swim. If they’re going to go, they have to learn to swim.” “They like to eat watermelon and fried chicken and just sit on the ground,” the person replies, at which point the video suddenly cuts out.
In a May 9 written statement, Skinner said Schiller used “racist and highly offensive language.” Skinner said in a statement that the department “will continue to review our policies, training, oversight and culture to ensure this type of behavior is never tolerated within our department.”
Skinner said at a June 11 meeting of the Police Commission, another citizen advisory board, that the Human Rights Commission, a civilian advisory board, had raised questions with the department including “how to more rigorously audit body camera videos.”
Skinner said the department collected about 20,000 hours of body camera footage in the last calendar year.
“There’s no way a human or a team of humans can audit all body camera footage,” Skinner said.
He spoke to committee members about the use of artificial intelligence.
“There is a path forward for the city as long as people are involved in quality control…to be able to search for words, key phrases, things like that,” Skinner said.
“An interesting project would be to work with the right people to determine what are the phrases and words to search for to give a good sense that body cameras are being successfully audited,” Skinner said.
Skinner said in May that the video of Schiller’s offensive comments was “inadvertently or unknowingly recorded.”
Police provided the video to local documentarian Tim Lewis as part of discovery proceedings in a misdemeanor theft case related to his actions on Jan. 30, the night a riot was declared at the Eugene Federal Building.
Lewis released a video of the then-unidentified officer on his YouTube channel, and Eugene police identified Schiller by name in a press conference after his resignation.
available technology
Ian T. Adams, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, said existing technology used by some police departments does more than just identify keywords and phrases used by officers.
Adams, a police and technology researcher, studied the results of evaluating police officer professionalism through body camera video.
For example, Adams said, technology systems currently being sold to police departments rate officers’ interactions with the public as substandard, professional or highly professional.
“Unprofessional is when an officer uses direct profanity, threats, insults or derogatory comments. Basically, what everyone would consider unprofessional police conduct,” Adams said.
Mr Adams said officers could be judged as “highly professional” by “using descriptive language before taking official action” such as writing a traffic citation.
One such technology company is Trueo, Adams said, but there are others.
Adams, a member of the Criminal Justice Council’s task force on artificial intelligence, said no one keeps track of how many departments are using such technology. The council is a nonpartisan think tank.
“I think it’s anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred at this point,” Adams said. The Seattle Police Department began testing Truleo technology, but the department did not continue using the technology.
A Seattle police spokesperson in 2023 cited concerns raised by the ACLU of Washington and others about civilian privacy when explaining why the trial was not extended. A later report said the suspension came after union leaders expressed dissatisfaction with the technique to the police chief when he issued a warning to officers mocking the woman’s death.
Adams explained that the natural language processing at the heart of this technology predates the “modern AI era,” and questioned whether executive evaluation products sold by companies like Trueo should be called artificial intelligence.
Adams, who designed the experiment to evaluate the technology’s performance on police professionalism, said he has never seen the technology result in interagency referrals to open investigations into misconduct.
Instead, the information was sent directly to the officer’s supervisor or officer to provide “feedback,” he said.
“The way this technology works is it flags issues. It flags ‘substandard professionalism’ and it’s just leaving it to the sergeant and reviewing the direct sergeant, and that direct sergeant is not internal affairs,” Adams said.
Adams said he doesn’t think such an approach is a “good audit” when it comes to simply creating a list of keywords to flag.
“There’s more to talking to people than just not saying ‘f~,'” Adams said.
Adams said officers may even use profanity to defuse a confrontation.
“I think it’s hard to come up with a black-and-white list of absolute no-nos, other than maybe a few racist words. Not all ‘mommys’ are created equal.”
