Abel Launches To Address Police Shortage And Keep Communities Safe

Abel , the police tech company that turns body camera footage into reports with AI, today announces its public launch. The company is building the future of policing by automating paperwork for patrol officers. There are 900,000 police officers in the country, and officers spend an average of 1/3 of their time on writing reports. Abel aims to reduce that to zero, effectively increasing available police hours by 50%. Abel's mission is to restore citizens' confidence in law enforcement agencies. The company also announces $5 million in seed funding, led by Day One Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Long Journey Ventures and a group of founders.

The company was founded by Daniel Francis (he was on Elon's transition team at Twitter), who started the company after he saw a friend go through a domestic violence situation in which her husband repeatedly violated a restraining order and the police required 45 minutes to respond.

"Watching my friend go through a violent situation and feeling how terrifying it is when the police are simply unavailable changed my views on the importance of police for society. Improving policing became my number one interest, and finding the statistic that police are spending one third of their time writing reports made the path forward clear to me," said Francis.

After selling his previous company, Francis took a position as an intern at the Richmond Police Department in California to research police reporting practices. Francis built Abel's founding team of executives and advisors that include veterans from Axon, Department of Homeland Security, Palo Alto Networks, OpenAI, DC Metro Police, and a former President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Severe Operational Difficulties

Since 2020, law enforcement agencies across the country have faced severe operational difficulties. Over 80% of agencies report officer shortages , with a 30% rise in officer resignations and a 25% drop in applicants compared to pre-2020 levels. Meanwhile, police are taking longer to respond to emergency calls. For example, in New Orleans, the average police response time nearly tripled , increasing from 51 minutes in 2019 to 146 minutes in the following year. In cities across the country, response times have increased by 20-30% since 2020 , and rural response times can be even greater.

These longer response times are attributed to fewer available officers, larger geographic areas to cover, and limited resources in police departments. These issues lead to significant delays in emergency situations, often times with lives on the line.

"Imagine San Francisco with 50% more cops, it would be a very different city", Francis explains.

Nobody becomes an officer to file paperwork

Abel was created to help police focus on the work that inspired them to become officers in the first place. Using AI, Abel processes body camera footage and dispatch data, automatically generating reports that include both the structured form fields that officers must fill out and the narrative describing the events that occurred. The reports are automatically inserted into the forms officers already use, adding no extra steps for patrol officers and requiring only minutes for agency administrative staff to set up.

"I haven't seen a more customer-obsessed founder than Daniel," said Masha Bucher, founder and general partner at Day One Ventures. "He's a special combination of exceptional technical skill with keen product intuition, creating a real-world use case of AI that can transform communities, improve lives, and fix cities across our country. I'm excited to support a company fixing one of the most pressing problems in America."

"It's not a nice-to-have, it's a need-to-have"

"It gives you more time to do your primary job. It allows police to focus on what they should be doing, instead of filling out five documents that are essentially the same and could be completed all at once," adds Don DeLucca, former IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) president, Miami Beach Chief of Police, and a member of Abel's advisory board. He also mentions that today's police officers have grown up in a different world of technology and are eager to use these tools for good.

"Thanks to Abel, we can spend more time in the field and respond to more service calls, instead of being tied to a computer for 45 minutes just to file just one report. Once, I completed five reports in under an hour. Abel enables us to do proactive work to prevent crime, so we can help more people and catch the bad guys," said one Richmond PD officer.

New Integration Announcement

Abel is also announcing an integration with Mark43 , a leading records management system (RMS) used by the US Secret Service, Defense Intelligence Agency, and major police agencies including Atlanta, Washington DC, Boston, and Seattle. This integration will help police departments across the country reduce administrative bottlenecks, allowing officers to spend less time on paperwork and more time solving crimes and keeping communities safe.

"I really like police"

Another motivating factor for Francis was his passion for police work itself. And this customer obsesison is obvious. He mentions that fundraising was easy for him, because he knows everything about the topic. "The product is clearly needed, it's an underserved market, and it's quite large. Those three factors make it pretty easy".

As Abel continues to expand, the company's innovative approach to leveraging AI for public safety could serve as a blueprint for law enforcement agencies nationwide. By automating the most time-consuming aspects of police work, Abel is not only helping officers reclaim valuable hours but also addressing some of the most pressing challenges in today's policing landscape.