Two-year rollout needed for body cameras, police say
The department plans on a staggered deployment of cameras stretching to 2017 – a full year behind the mayor’s hopes
Above: A body camera on a Los Angeles police officer.
While a pilot program will be launched at the end of October, it will take two years to deploy body cameras throughout the police force once the cameras are purchased, Baltimore police officials told a City Council hearing today.
One reason for the lengthy rollout is that police precincts will require major technology upgrades to support bandwidth.
The department also needs to train 2,500 police officers to use the cameras – and can’t train them all at once.
The new date is fully a year later than July 2016, the date that a task force appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake anticipated for the implementation of the full program.
More recently, in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, Rawlings-Blake has repeated that she hopes to implement the entire program by summer 2016.
The pilot will consist of 155 body cameras, the bulk of which will be divided among the Eastern, Central and Western districts, Caroline Sturgis, director of fiscal services, told the Council.
Ten vendors have already submitted bids to outfit the police with their cameras; the Board of Estimates is expected to pick the winning vendor sometime after Labor Day.
$5 Million Allocated
The 2016 city budget allocates $5.1 million for the body camera program – $1.5 million from the general fund and $3.6 million from the asset forfeiture fund.
Councilman Nick Mosby, who represents West Baltimore’s 7th district, asked why the rollout would take until 2017.
“It’s going to take time to order the equipment,” said Andrew Jaffee, the department’s director of information technology. “And some equipment can’t be ordered until a camera vendor is chosen. The vendor we choose determines network capacity.”
“In addition,” he said,” there is also department training capacity.” The department can’t train 2,500 at once and doesn’t want to break the “overtime bank,” or the overtime that police typically charge the city.
“That’s why we feel a staged rollout is necessary,” Jaffee said.
Mosby replied that if deployment is to be staggered, there may be no need to buy all 2,500 cameras at once.