City to purchase police body cameras

Devices to be integrated with in-car video systems

Mentor Police Department will be outfitted with body cameras in the new year.

City Council this week approved entering a contract with WatchGuard Video to buy 30 Vista bodyworn cameras for $103,060. The city had budgeted $100,000 for the item this year.

“WatchGuard Video has provided police in-car video cameras and support to the city since 2013 with outstanding results,” the legislation reads.

The car cameras can be synchronized with the body cameras, which helped determine which device to purchase.

“When we consider the number

and types of recordings we will likely have with the body cameras, it is important for the recordings to be stored and processed in the same manner as are the in-car recordings,” said police Capt. Andrew B. Lehner, administrative commander.

The body camera and in-car recordings will be linked; allowing all video and audio from one incident to be processed and stored together as one event.

The cameras will be worn by uniformed patrol officers and supervisors.

“This number will be sufficient for each officer on duty to wear one camera while having enough in the station charging for use by the next shift,” Lehner said. “If the need arose, we could have plainclothes officers and detectives also wear a body camera for certain assignments.”

The Vista system offers high-definition resolution, 130-degree field of view and an adjustable lens that rotates 40 degrees to allow for proper viewing from differing mounting positions. When it becomes activated, it will automatically activate the in-car camera.

“This will allow multiple recordings on one incident that get linked together automatically for thorough coverage,” Lehner said.

The city and police administration decided more than a year ago to phase in body cameras, police Chief Kevin Knight said.

“This was placed in the 2017 budget long before anything happened in Euclid, and is not a response to any other incident here or in another community,” he said.

He was referring to an August incident in which former Euclid patrolman Michael Amiott repeatedly punched a man he pulled over during a traffic stop. It was unclear from dash cam video what might have prompted the officer to react in such a way.

Amiott, who previously worked for Mentor Police Department, was fired from the Euclid force in October.