Plans outlined for body cams, 911 issues

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and his appointees outlined plans last week to hire 40 full- and part-time employees to help resolve police body camera delays and 911 hold times.

At a City Council committee meeting, Strickland said the city will need to hire 10 full-time video analysts before it can equip 1,700 police officers with body cameras. Also, District Attorney Amy Weirich needs 15-30 new employees to handle attorney evidence requests, and County Public Defender Stephen Bush may also need more staff, he said.

Strickland, who suspended the rollout indefinitely last month, said he still isn’t sure when the body cameras will be fieldready.

“I wish I could say by soand-so date that all of them would be on the street, but I don’t want to over-promise that,” he said.

Strickland said his administration would within two weeks reveal policies for public records requests for videos and nail down the cost of the new video analysts, and where those funds would come from in Police Services’ $246.2 million budget. The dist r ic t at tor ney ’s h i res should be funded by the county, he said.

Strickland said the city wants to protect people’s privacy, and will edit children’s faces, insides of houses, and nudity out of videos.

In an earlier council committee meeting, Chief Operations Officer Doug McGowen said Strickland also plans to hire 30 parttime 911 dispatchers to cut 911 hold times to the national standard of 20 seconds or less. Only 50 percent of calls meet that goal now.

“This is somet hi ng we absolutely have to get right,” McGowen said.

The dispatchers, who should start within 14 weeks, will cost $326,884 in the current fiscal year and $991,613 in the fiscal year that starts July 1, according to an executive summary given to council members.

McGowen said the city should have a comprehensive plan on 911 call center issues by the end of May.

Council member Berlin Boyd said some of his constituents, in light of recent police-involved shootings, have questioned Strickland’s commitment to us- ing the cameras.

“The question kept coming back to me: Why is it that whenever it’s something heartfelt in the African-American community, it seems as if those items go unnoticed?” Boyd said.

Strickland said he inherited the issues with the body cameras and the 911 call center when he took office Jan. 1 from previous mayor A C Wharton. He reiterated that public safety issues are a top concern.

“It is important to me,” Strickland said of body cameras. “The prior administration did not get them on the streets, did not plan for the public records response, did not work with the district attorney’s office on getting them prepared to do it. We are going to do it. And we are going to get it done. And we are going to be very transparent about the whole process, which is why we’re here today, which is why we’re going to come back in two weeks.”

Interim Police Director Mike Rallings, who attended the council meeting for the first time since he took office, asked for patience from the community. The city shouldn’t rush such an “enormous” project that means so much to the community, and to him personally, he said.

Strickland said police will in March expand the scope of a body cameras pilot program from three officers to a full shift of 12-14 officers at Crump Station.

The city already has 150 new in-car cameras in use, and has collected a total of 11,000 hours of video since October. Police will add 750 new car cameras in the next four years.

To store the videos, the city will have to pay $4.1 million over five years, plus $70 per terabyte each month the city exceeds its storage limits, Strickland said.