The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Body cameras coming soon
Usage by police department expected by the end of 2018
The Mentor Police Department’s body cameras should soon be rolling.
Mentor Police Captain Andrew Lehner said the department is expected to begin using the cameras by the end of the year.
It’s just short of a year since Mentor City Council approved the purchase of 30 body cameras for the department for $103,060.
The Vista body-worn cameras are from WatchGuard Video, the company that has provided the department’s in-car video cameras since 2013.
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 city, which received the cameras in February is still in the process of installing the hardware needed in each marked vehicle that allows the body cam and incar video to sync up. Lehner said that process should be completed within the next few weeks.
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 previously said.
City council approved the cameras in November 2017,
but the city and police administration decided more than a year prior to phase in body cameras. Police Chief Kevin Knight said last year that the decision was not prompted by any incident within the city or anywhere else.
Lehner said in a Nov. 15 interview that the body cameras can be useful in the documentation of evidence. It will also help officers prepare for offense reports. The cameras can also be used to support or debunk
claims of officer misconduct.
Just around the time that the Mentor Police Department was receiving its new body cameras, research sponsored by the National Institute of Justice was published that found that in Las Vegas, “body-worn cameras benefit the officers who wear them and the public they serve.”
The study was a collaboration between the NIJ, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the CNA Institute for Public Research, Northeastern University, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The study involved a year-long randomized control experiment involving more than 400 police officers in the city.
Among the findings in the study were that Las Vegas police officers who wore body cameras generated “significantly fewer complaints and use of force reports” than officers without the cameras. Officers wearing the cameras also made more arrested and issued more citations.
“Benefit analysis revealed that savings from reduced complaints against officers, and the reduced time required to resolve such complaints, resulted in substantial cost savings for the police department,” the study stated.
The NIJ stated in a blog post that while the results of the study show the camera’s benefits, empirical research remains limited and in some cases contradictory.
“As with any criminal justice initiative, context matters,” NIJ wrote in the post. “What worked in Las Vegas may not work in other cities. NIJ will continue to evaluate results on this topic, including those that reach different conclusions.”