Smart Features Provide Efficiency, Accountability
Marshfield Police Department’s new body cameras went live last month, after the initial WatchGuard model launched in June 2017 proved to have complications..
“The previous cameras locked up,” said Assistant Chief Pat Zeps. “They froze up to the point that they were unusable. After sending back 45 cameras under warranty, we decided to get new ones.”
The new system, created by Axon, provides improved storage options, compatibility with other equipment, customer service, and reliability.
“We had made the decision when we went with the old ones to store the videos on the city server,” said Chief Rick Gramza. “We quickly learned that the videos take up a ton of space to where we were forced to allocate a ridiculous amount of man hours to clear space. It took time to code the videos and then purge those videos no longer needing to be retained.”
Features such as integration with Evidence.com allow for improved sharing between departments.
“We can give the DA’s office access to specific videos, rather than having to burn to a disc or flash drive,” said Gramza. “This saves a hundreds of man hours.”
The new body cameras can also be synced to the officer’s smart phones, which allows the phone to be utilized as a monitor.
“Where that’s really handy is if you have an armed barricaded situation similar to the one on Vine St. recently, where rather than being at the door with little to no protection, the officer could have taken their body camera off, set it on the floor, backed away, and watched from their smart phone from around the corner where it is safe,” said Gramza.
The cameras have a pre-record feature, saving the last 30 seconds prior to the button being pressed. This 30-second pre-record helps capture important interactions without having the cameras continually storing video. Video is useful for a number of reasons, including as a teaching tool for officers or recapping an incident.
“It helps if you have a complex case and you are trying to do a report,” added Zeps. “Plus, this software audits everything. It’ll tell you how many times you watched the video, who watched it. This is important especially if it’s a sensitive case.”
Integration with a smartphone also allows officers to use the cameras to take crime scene photos as needed.
“You download the app and take the photos. It saves the photos to the app, and once you hit a wifi hotspot, it automatically uploads them to the cloud. It also deletes it off the phone at that point,” said Zeps.
Officers are benefiting from the new features, and they are glad to have their body cameras back after a three-month hiatus.
“We sent the cameras back on July 31. Between then and October 23, I couldn’t tell you how many times officers asked me ‘when we are going to get the new ones? I miss having it,'” said Gramza.
“The cameras provide overall accountability for the community and the police department,” added Gramza. “Knowing that you are being recorded has a tendency to calm some situations. If someone knows that we share some of these videos with the community, they might behave differently. Also with that, I think it’s a huge deterrent if somebody wants to call up and say something false about an officer. We can now look at the body cam footage, so if they falsely accuse, it won’t hold up.”
Later this month, the department will implement their new radios. Then, they hope to switch the dash cameras to the Axon provider, allowing for further integration. Axon also manufactures officer safety packages which include items such as “Taser,” with a smart-feature which when activated automatically tell the camera to record.
http://focusonmarshfield.com/police-department-suspends-body-cameras/
