With body camera footage becoming more and more important to cases drawing widespread national attention, police departments in California are proactively drafting policies to prepare for what they feel is an inevitable mandate – that all officers use and wear the body cameras. Most civilian and police groups agree the devices build transparency and answer the community concerns—but there are still hurdles to adopting the technology.

In Southern California, Los Angeles and Burbank police departments have begun talks with civilian oversight organizations to ensure officers use body cameras with the best possible practices.

“Our goal is to draft a policy that will be the industry standard for other organizations to come to us to have that best policy,” said Deputy Chief Mike Albanese from the Burbank Police Commission.

Though the time frame for when officers will actually begin wearing the cameras is unknown, the public assumption is that it is will happen soon.

“Everyone knows it’s coming,” Albanese said. “Whether it’s going to be mandated legislatively or from an officer-safety component, risk management component… It’s going to happen.”

The biggest obstacle to the body cameras being implemented is the cost involved and the reliability of the storage technology. Burbank looked at buying cameras in 2015 and found the price tag–$570,000—was a bit steep for council members to approve.

While the cost is an issue that police departments and city councils across the nation will have to contend with, we here at DIGISTOR know that data reliability will not be an issue so long as our practices and technologies are employed. DIGISTOR offers a portfolio of solutions for reliable law enforcement data storage, including Flash-based storage for body cameras and in-car video devices.

For more information about our suite of police storage devices, visit our product page now, or reach out to a DIGISTOR representative today.

Sources:
https://latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-me-body-cameras-20170523-story.html
https://bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-39730665https://usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2017-05-20/body-cameras-create-unexpected-challenges-for-oregon-county
https://nytimes.com/2017/04/27/nyregion/new-york-police-department-body-cameras.html?_r=0