Oberlin Police Department to use body cams

Police cameras will no longer be planted solely in officers’ cruisers in Oberlin.

They will soon be attached to the police officers themselves.

On Oct. 6, the Oberlin Police Department presented the agency’s new body cameras, or body cams, that all on-duty officers and sergeants will wear on their uniforms in the next few weeks.

According to Oberlin police Lt. Mike McCloskey, the cameras are intended to collect evidence to build trust between the community and police.

Oberlin police Chief Tom Miller said the interest for cameras rose after police saw an advantage in installing cameras inside their cruisers. However, the amount of captured footage is limited because the devices are only fixed to the front of the cars, and the cameras could potentially miss an interaction between civilians and officers, he said.

“There’ve been times where there’ve been physical encounters that took place not in front of the camera in the cruiser,” Miller said. “It would have been nice to have recorded (the evidence). We’re losing evidence if something gets out of the camera’s view.”

The body cameras allow for the device to go wherever the officer goes, McCloskey said,

“The camera serves as an impartial third party whenever police are interacting with the public,” he said. “It gives a feeling of security and transparency to the public.”

The Police Department bought 15 cameras for $12,000, with $5,450 coming from a federal grant it pursued in 2013.

According to police, the technology is not unique to Lorain County police departments. However, Oberlin is the first city in the county to provide each on-duty officer with their own camera and deploy the initiative department-wide.

McCloskey said the department contacted vendors and viewed several cameras to determine the best fit, considering weather resistance, durability, ease of use and photo quality.

The department decided on the Taser Axon body cam, which is weather proof with 720p resolution. With the double touch of a center event button, the Taser Axon, which is no larger than a small cell phone, can start or stop recording an interaction.

The camera can record audio and video. The device has up to 12 hours of battery life so officers can use it for a full shift, police said.

Once plugged into a charging dock, the camera will recharge and download video footage as separate files into a secure and automatic evidence management software set up by a vendor, McCloskey said. When the videos are downloaded into the system, the serial number of the camera and officer assigned to that unit are recognized. Officers then can locate and retrieve the footage they need.

McCloskey said he believes the cameras can provide an unbiased account of officercivilian interactions, as well as reduce the use of force because people may modify their behavior once they see the camera.

Police acknowledged possible technical setbacks like glitches where the camera may not capture an entire event. Due to the constant surveillance of civilian-police interaction, privacy may also be a concern.

When the videos are uploaded, the footage is saved in an offsite cloud server, rather than to the city’s computers so it won’t tie up the servers with loads of video files, McCloskey said. Only staff using the cameras will be granted access to the system with a username and password, and only can view their own footage.

“Nobody from the outside, including the vendor, would have access to video content,” he said.

The system is set up with permissions in the software’s security settings, McCloskey said. Limited edits can be done to highlight or flag portions of a video if only a segment is needed for court purposes, which he said does not compromise the original footage.

Basic users won’t have authorization to flag or edit, and officers will be monitored with a built-in audit trail to ensure footage is not tampered with, he said.

“Those are challenges we’re going to have to tackle,” McCloskey said. “There’s going to be a learning curve.

“Obviously, it’s a new technology; officers have to get used to them. There will definitely be a period of adjustment.”