New body cameras for police approved
NEWARK >> Newark will spend $170,000-plus to buy new body-worn cameras and video management software for the city’s police department.
A five-year contract the City Council unanimously approved May 24 with Seattle-based camera supplier Vievu will buy 65 body cameras to equip the department’s 59 sworn officers and provide spares as needed, according to a city staff report.
The department has contracted with Vievu since it first started using bodyworn cameras in 2013.
The new contract also includes Vievu’s management software and cloud storage, which will allow the police department to streamline the process of sending video files to those who need copies, such as the district attorney, the report said.
Police detectives currently deliver DVD copies of video evidence to the District Attorney’s Office, Capt. Chonman Loth said Tuesday.
He said the new cameras should start being used by the beginning of the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
According to the staff report, the department will use the Vievu LE5 camera, which also features an ability to save up to three minutes of video without audio before an officer activates the camera.
Loth said the agency likely will set the cameras to capture 30 seconds of video before officers activate the cameras, although that hasn’t yet been written into the department’s policy governing body-worn camera use.
“There’s a lot of things we’re looking at before we make a policy into effect, and we certainly want to make sure that we’re sensitive to officers’ privacy, as well as citizens’ privacy, but also want to make sure that we document use of force incidents, just for accountability and transparency,” Loth said.
The current department policy gives officers the discretion to activate a recording “any time they feel its use would be appropriate and/or valuable to document an incident,” according to a copy of the policy provided to this news organization.
“Unless it is unsafe or impractical to do so, personnel should make an effort” to start recording before “enforcement encounters where there is a reasonable suspicion the person is involved in criminal activity,” as well as before vehicle pursuits, probation searches and contact with people “suffering from issues related to mental illness,” the policy reads.
The policy also says a recording should be activated during “any other contact that becomes adversarial after teh (sic) initial contact in a situation that would not otherwise require taping.”
“At this point in time not everything has to be recorded,” Loth said. “We believe that our officers have enough good judgement to be able to decide when they should and shouldn’t record.”
Though one of the goals listed in the staff report for purchasing body-worn cameras was to “provide a tool for institutional transparency,” Loth said the department’s chief, Michael Carroll, decides whether any video from the cameras is released to the public or the media in a case-by-case basis.