Phoenix police to get 2K body cameras

Council OKs $5M for sought-after technology

Most of Phoenix’s police officers will soon be equipped with on-body cameras that automatically turn on when they get out of their patrol cars. The Phoenix City Council voted Wednesday to invest $5 million in the technology, a move that has been years in the making.

The request from the Police Department passed on a 7-1 vote, with Councilman Jim Waring the lone opposing vote.

The money will be used to equip 2,000 officers with an Axon body camera and to hire up to 30 employees for the Police Department and the City Attorney’s Office to handle any footage in records requests and in prosecutions.

In the wake of a record-breaking year for Phoenix police shootings in 2018, activists and Phoenix police both agreed that officers should be equipped with on-body cameras to record officers’ interactions with the public.

But they are split on the intended

purpose of the cameras.

At a City Council meeting in downtown Phoenix, activists and residents said that equipping officers with cameras is the bare minimum in modern-day policing. For some of them, they believe it will show the unjust ways officers have treated some residents.

“We know that body cameras won’t reduce the use of force by the Phoenix Police Department, or keep them accountable with their actions to the community,” said Parris Wallace, addressing the council. “But for those people who have been impacted by this police violence, body cameras are an important step in getting closure.”

For the Police Department, the purpose of the cameras is to be transparent and create trust between officers and the community.

Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams described the council’s decision as “huge” during a subsequent news conference Wednesday.

She also said that for any resident who may have complaints of excessive force by an officer, the footage would show the truth.

“What I think the body-worn cameras system will show is what really happened,” she said.

She later added, “We’re, again, committed to transparency, committed to sharing what we can share. We’re open, we want to be good community partners and we want to increase trust in our community.”

Viri Hernandez, the executive director of Poder in Action, a west Phoenix group that has criticized police violence in Maricopa County, told the council that it should make sure the Police Department implements a strict policy for how officers use the cameras.

For example, she said, any footage of a use-of-force case should be shown or released to family members first before it is released to the media. She also said it should be released within 48 hours.

Williams told the council that she agreed that any footage should be shown to family members before releasing it publicly. She also said the cameras they will buy have a feature that automatically turns them on when officers get out of their patrol cars.

As for releasing the footage within 48 hours, the chief said that is something that would be later determined after the department familiarizes itself with the technology.

In 2013, the Phoenix Police Department began a pilot program with 300 on-body cameras. But since then, the department has been unsuccessful in securing additional funding to buy additional cameras, until Wednesday.

The $5 million will come out of the city’s general fund.

Executive Assistant Chief Michael Kurtenbach said the Police Department will contact Axon, the Scottsdale-based vendor that has developed technology for police departments across the country such as Tasers, on Thursday to sort out the logistics in acquiring the cameras.

Once the department gets the cameras, it hopes to start equipping officers within 30 to 45 days, Kurtenbach said.

The first phase, he said, is to equip about 1,400 officers with cameras, including first responders and sergeants. The second phase, he said, is to equip 200 officers in the traffic and transit departments. And finally, he said, they will evaluate which officers will get the remaining cameras.

As of now, the department has about 300 VIEVU cameras assigned to patrol officers who are the likeliest to be the first at a scene. That’s a fraction of the nearly 3,000 sworn officers employed at Phoenix police and the approximately 500 officers working at any given time.

Kurtenbach said those cameras will no longer be used.

In 2018, Phoenix police shot at people in 44 different cases, killing 23 people.

That was more than any of the country’s four largest cities.

The New York City Police Department, the largest in the country, covering a city of 8.5 million, had 13 police shootings through November, a spokesman told The Arizona Republic. As of Dec. 10, Los Angeles and Chicago had 31 shootings, and Houston had 16.

At Wednesday’s meeting, some community members said that the cameras are a first step in restoring faith in the Police Department.

“This is how we’re going to build trust between the community and the police,” Redeem Robinson told the council.