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Brandon Anderson (entrepreneur)

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Brandon D. Anderson is an American sociologist and entrepreneur. He founded Raheem.ai, a chatbot which helps the public monitor police interactions. He was the 2018 Echoing Green Black Male Achievement Fellow and is a 2019 TED fellow. In August 2024, several of Anderson's claims about his chatbot and personal history were questioned in an investigative article in The New York Times.

Early life

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Anderson was born in Oklahoma.[1] His mother is a rental car clerk and his father a forklift truck driver.[2][3] He has described his childhood as being "characterised by violence".[4] He was kicked out of his grandparents house as a teenager and made homeless.[5] Anderson ran away with his best friend, with whom he later fell in love.[5] Anderson enlisted in the Army in 2003, where he worked as a satellite engineer.[1][6] In 2007, while Anderson was serving as an engineer in the army overseas, he alleged that his partner was shot and killed by a police officer during a routine traffic stop.[5][7] An August 2024 article in The New York Times by David Fahrenthold suggested Anderson fabricated this origin story.[8] Anderson was discharged from the Army once he disclosed his sexuality.[9]

Education and career

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Anderson became a community activist and organiser, earning a degree at Georgetown University in 2015.[5] At Georgetown he studied sociology and philosophy.[6] He served as a Racial Equity Fellow at the Washington, D.C. Center for the Study of Social Policy.[4] Anderson learned that the majority of people don't report negative interactions with police officers because they "do not trust the system".[10]

In 2014 Anderson was awarded money from Fast ForWord and the My Brother's Keeper Challenge to build Raheem.ai, a Facebook messenger chatbot that eliminates barriers to reporting police misconduct.[1][11][12] The chatbot allowed the public to evaluate police interactions and offers follow-on support for users.[13][14] Raheem.ai was inspired by Waze, who, alongside offering navigation information, used user-generated information to inform local government about fill potholes.[12] The chatbot asked questions about recent interactions with the police, anonymized the data that was collected, and shared them in real-time to a public dashboard on police performance.[15][16][17] Raheem.ai published reports about where police are working well and where they are failing communities.[1][18] It aimed to reach all fifty states by 2020.[19] With Raheem.ai, Anderson looked to build the first crowdsourced database of police interactions.[20][21][22]

In 2016 Anderson delivered a TED talk at Georgetown, where he discussed what it means to be vulnerable.[23] He was named as one of the National Black Justice Coalition 100 Black LGBTQ/SGL Emerging Leaders.[24] Anderson was made an Echoing Green Fellow in 2018.[25][26]

However, Raheem.ai was never able to overcome a fundamental problem: that the US' thousands of separate police agencies have their own individual ways of preferred contact. David Fahrenthold of The New York Times wrote in August 2024:[8]

Mr. Anderson's complaint system — "Yelp for police," he called it — did not work. His website collected more than 2,700 stories from users about their interactions with police — accounts of unjustified traffic stops, physical assaults and harassment. But the work had little impact because Raheem was unable to solve a mind-bending technical problem.

There are 18,000 police departments in America. Some accept complaints online, but many require people to make a phone call or go to a police station. Raheem failed because it never offered a one-stop way for users to file their complaints directly with police.

[...] For now, his nonprofit appears legally active, but functionally dead. Several donors pulled their funding. Three employees were left out of work.[8]

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In August 2024, The New York Times scrutinized Anderson's financial practices while heading Raheem.ai. They included large sums for hotels and clothing that were billed to the non-profit.[8] The Washington DC Attorney General's Office filed an injunction and lawsuit saying that Anderson and Raheem.ai misused funds for the lavish lifestyle of Anderson. [27]

In November 2024, Attorney General Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb sued Raheem AI, a nonprofit created to improve transparency and accountability in policing, and its founder and Executive Director Brandon Anderson for violating the District’s nonprofit and workers’ rights laws. Anderson used Raheem AI’s charitable funds for his own personal benefit - specifically to support his luxurious lifestyle - while the organization failed to monitor spending or implement basic nonprofit governance requirements. Anderson and Raheem AI also failed to pay the organization’s sole District-based employee the wages she had earned and required her to sign an illegal non-compete clause.[28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Kolodny, Lora (2017-09-13). "Raheem.ai: Yelp or Amazon Reviews for police interactions". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  2. ^ "Brandon D. Anderson". Conference on World Affairs. 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  3. ^ "My Origin Story: Brandon Anderson". Generation Titans. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  4. ^ a b "Raheem". SIPS Fund. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  5. ^ a b c d "Raheem is a Chatbot for Anonymously Rating Experiences with Police". Fast Forward. 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  6. ^ a b "Brandon Anderson". Halcyon. 2017-06-28. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  7. ^ Whats Your Revolution 10 24 18 Brandon Anderson Founder of Raheem AI, retrieved 2019-02-27
  8. ^ a b c d Fahrenthold, David A. (2024-08-25). "Would a Group Opposed to Police Blow the Whistle on Its Founder?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-08-27.
  9. ^ Gray, Christopher. "Brandon Anderson's RAHEEM Has Leveraged Technology And Data To Help Thousands Of Black People Report Police Misconduct". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  10. ^ Mathew, Teresa (18 June 2018). "Positive or Negative: Rate Your Latest Police Encounter". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  11. ^ Schwartz, Elena (2018-06-13). "Can Artificial Intelligence Hold Police Accountable?". The Crime Report. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  12. ^ a b "FEATURE: Young Black Entrepreneur Brandon Anderson creates app to monitor police brutality". AFROPUNK. 2016-04-18. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  13. ^ "Brandon Anderson". Wonder Women Tech. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  14. ^ Farley, Shannon (2017-06-22). "Nonprofits, not Silicon Valley startups, are creating AI apps for the greater good". Recode. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  15. ^ "Raheem Ai - Tech Nonprofit". Fast Forward. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  16. ^ Fast Forward (2018-03-29), Brandon Anderson, Founder of Raheem | AGG 2018, retrieved 2019-02-27
  17. ^ Peters, Adele (2017-10-02). "This Chatbot Makes It Easy To Document Your Interactions With The Police". Fast Company. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  18. ^ "Meet the chatbots helping users anonymously report social injustices". VentureBeat. 2018-03-18. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  19. ^ "Brandon Anderson". Camelback Ventures. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  20. ^ "The AI Agenda". The Economist Events. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  21. ^ contributor, Julia Airey / (2016-11-04). "Can this new chatbot increase police accountability?". Technical.ly DC. Retrieved 2019-02-27. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  22. ^ "Gay Man's Software Holds Police Accountable". www.intomore.com. 15 September 2017. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  23. ^ TEDx Talks (2016-03-14), Make Space | Brandon Anderson | TEDxGeorgetown, retrieved 2019-02-27
  24. ^ "100 to Watch | National Black Justice Coalition". www.nbjc.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  25. ^ "Brandon Anderson". www.echoinggreen.org. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  26. ^ Echoing Green (2018-06-18), To Live and to Love in a World Free of Police Violence, retrieved 2019-02-27
  27. ^ https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-sues-nonprofit
  28. ^ "Attorney General Schwalb Sues Police Accountability Nonprofit & Executive for Misusing Charitable Funds, Violating Labor Laws". oag.dc.gov. 2024-11-25. Retrieved 2024-12-17.
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