Body Cams, From Page 1:
HD VIDEOS PUSHING COST OF DATA STORAGE EVEN HIGHER
body camera or dashboard camera — was a compromise to help pass the bill, said Democratic Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, who sponsored the legislation. The measure only applies to newly acquired vehicles, and it exempts officers who work in administrative roles or detectives who don’t regularly conduct traffic stops.
The most significant part of the compromise, however, is the funding mechanism: The legislation levies a $25 surcharge on convicted drunken drivers, a fine that stays in the municipality where the offense occurred. That funding can go toward purchasing cameras or data storage and other expenses that make having police cameras “workable,” Moriarty said.
“We have a problem here with the state mandating something and not coming up with some way to pay for it,” he said. “Some of these larger cities, they’re strapped for cash — and some of the smaller ones too.”
Lawmakers in some other states are trying a more straightforward approach. They are calling for state money to help pay for a technology they see as a necessity, and one for which the public and local police departments are clamoring.
AmeasureadvancinginTexas, for instance, would dedicate $50 million in state money to implement a requirement that officers across the state wear cameras. Several body camera bills have gained bipartisan support in Austin; one already has cleared the Senate, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has signaled his support for body camera legislation this session.
Democratic Rep. Ron Reynolds, who is pushing the $50 mil- lion measure, said finding the money to support body camera requirements was just as important as the requirement itself.
“If there’s no funding, then it’s nothing more than an unfunded mandated; it’s nothing more than a noble idea,” Reynolds said. “A lot of these municipalities, they don’t have the revenue to do it, they’re barely getting by now, they have to make it based on lean budgets.”
Reynolds admits his bill could change as the session winds toward its June adjournment, but he is optimistic the state will provide at least some money to pay for body cameras.
“Worst case scenario, we’re going to have limited funding where we can establish good practices and some good pilots,” Reynolds said. “Texas is going to be probably the first state with a full comprehensive body camera bill, and that’s going to send big shockwaves across the country because we’re known as a fairly conservative state, a red state, and we’re going to take the lead.”
In Nevada, Assembly Bill 162 would require all uniformed officers to wear body cameras. Metro Police in Las Vegas already is involved in a pilot program, and last week the agency got the OK to buy 336 new body cameras. It also will expand the infrastructure for its camera pilot program, which already uses 200 of the devices. Later this fiscal year, Metro Sheriff Joe Lombardo plans to ask for money to buy an additional 100. Those purchases, bolstered byacquisitions through federal grants, could bring the department’s total number of cameras to 700.
Some lawmakers in South Carolina, particularly the South Carolina Legislative Black Cau- cus, want the state to spend as much as $21.5 million for police body cameras in the wake of the Walter Scott shooting. Scott, who is black, was shot in the back and killed April 4 by a white police officer as he ran away in North Charleston, S.C. The shooting was captured on a cellphone video by a bystander.
ThePoliceExecutiveResearch Forum survey found most agencies spent between $800 and $1,200 per camera to purchase them, a daunting price tag for departments already strapped for cash.
But it is the ongoing costs that are the real challenge. The New Orleans Police Department plans to purchase 350 body cameras, but it is budgeting $1.2 million over five years, mostly for data storage.
Many states are debating the issues that surround police cameras without tackling the funding question, said Richard Williams, a criminal justice policy specialist with the NCSL. In many instances, he said, lawmakers are focused on how long departments should have to keep video, and if or when recordings should be made public.
Miller, with the Police Executive Research Forum, said those issues were important but that for police departments, cost was the overriding concern.
Officers could potentially record millions of videos a year, any number of which could be used as part of a criminal proceeding, a public records request or for another official purpose. The cost of downloading, logging, handling and storing all that video can be staggering.
“Most of the agencies that we worked with say the biggest issue is the backend data storage,” she said. “It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to store video each year.”
Costs were a stumbling block in Utah this year, where state lawmakers debated but didn’t pass body camera legislation. Meanwhile, some departments around the state are using the technology — and trying to meet the costs associated with it.
In Clearfield, Utah, a city of about 30,000 located 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, the police department has been using body cameras since 2010. But recently, data storage problems came to a head, and for a few weeks, the department was forced to use DVDs to store video because it ran out of computer server space.
“The more you use them, the more storage it takes, and the costs increase,” said Mike Stenquist, an assistant chief. “The public wants more, it also costs more. It creates a lot of problems.”
It’s not likely to get any better either, Stenquist said. Years ago, the department used older model cameras that needed to be recharged frequently and could only record two hours of video at a time, meaning officers had to return to the office frequently to download any recordings.
New models last longer and have greater storage capacity, he said. But now there’s another problem: The newer cameras record high-definition video, which means the video files are much larger, a reality that contributed to the department’s recent data crunch.
“Thedatajustbuilds up,” Stenquist said. “Now that we have better cameras that record through a whole shift, it’s taking three or four times the data storage.”
Between cost concerns and public access questions, Stenquist said, it’s probably inevitable that state lawmakers will have to step in.