Cal City to upgrade police body cameras
CALIFORNIA CITY — The California City Police Department has been approved to acquire new bodyworn cameras.
The City Council voted 4-1 to approve CCPD to purchase 20 body cameras, docking stations and iCloud licenses from Digital Ally during a City Council meeting on Tuesday.
California City Chief of Police Jon Walker said the climate in law enforcement is that body cams are not a luxury but an absolute need.
“This is a must-have,” he said. “So this is the best we’ve been able to find that we can go to and replace the failing system that we currently have.”
The department’s current body cams, which were approved for funding by the Council in 2015, have seen a decline in quality over the last two years, according to the department’s report.
Since purchasing them from Body Cams by Retired Cops, the department has had difficulty getting information technology support since one of the company’s founders died.
Walker said one of the major problems the department is having in court with the current system is that the cameras are not consistent with the user.
“If I go out and I have an incident and they go to pull my body cam for that day, what we’re having is they might pull the body cam for another officer on that day,” he said. “So the consistency and evidence at that point become a problem.”
The body cams that will be purchased from Digital Ally will cost the department $60,383 in total. It will be financed over the next five years — $12,397.60 the first year and $11, 997.60 over the next four.
The money for the body cams will come out of the department’s budget for armory/safety equipment.
Although Walker preferred the body cam from
Watch Guard, its 10-hour battery life was one of the deciding factors against it.
“If you look at the Watch Guard, it’s only got a 10- to 12-hour battery life,” he said. “We work at least 12-hour shifts, that’s a problem.”
The extra cost for storage and download was also a negative for the Watch Guard cameras as those services are included for Digital Ally.
“We think it’s the best bang for our buck at $60,000,” Walker said.