The Vero Beach Police Department plans to add officer-worn body cameras to the agency’s standard equipment either this year or next – the only question is when will the city have the money to fund the up to $90,000 annual cost.
Budget workshops are still four months away, but the issue came up when a community activist, moved by a 2015 shooting incident in Palm Beach Gardens where cameras were not employed, spoke before the Vero Beach City Council last month advocating for the cameras. Michael Marsh said the cameras protect the public, that legislation is coming and “I want my city to be ahead of the curve.”
Legislation mandating the cameras has been proposed the past couple of years in Tallahassee, but so far has failed to garner enough support to become state law. Police Chief David Currey said he and his leadership staff have been researching cameras from three different manufacturers and are trying to find the best, most affordable way to go.
“We are always planning, and one of our projects we’re planning is body cameras. In all honesty I think it’s inevitable that most agencies, if not all, will have body cameras as a way of doing business,” Currey said. “It’s just like the dash cams. For a long time we didn’t have dash cams, but then everybody got them. That’s just the way the technology goes.”
If he does not include a request for the $80,000 to $90,000 annual cost of cameras in the 2017-18 budget year which starts Oct. 1, Currey said he would most likely request the funding for the 2018-19 budget year. Vero has between 50 and 55 officers on the force, depending upon the flux of recruitment and retirements.
Curry said the cameras protect police officers as well as the public. With video footage, a controversial incident often can be sorted out more quickly and accurately, and the existence of a video record diffuses complaints and potential litigation. He said the department has only had two lawsuits in recent memory, and none that has been paid out for 15 years, but that camera footage could have cleared his officers without expensive legal bills and time spent on defending the department.
Police who have body cameras say the devices can prevent trouble from escalating during an interaction. When informed they are being filmed, suspects and bystanders often are less likely to become belligerent or violent.
Currey said it costs about $95 per month, per officer to equip the force with the latest leased body cameras. The vendors also offer a combination rate of roughly $160 per month per month per officer for a dash camera and a body camera, so Vero could replace the dash cams it now owns with leased cameras as the equipment wears out or breaks.
Vice Mayor Harry Howle said, “I don’t have a problem with the cameras as long as it’s within the scope of the budget.”
Nearly every year during budget season, controversy erupts over the police budget – mostly about salaries and benefits – but money is always tight when it comes to new expenditures. The department is in the process of getting all of its vehicles replaced to increase reliability and to save on maintenance and repairs. City Manager Jim O’Connor said continuing that vehicle replacement effort would take precedence over investing in body cameras.
Councilman Tony Young asked Currey about other needs and priorities in his department. Currey said the department recently invested in rifles for every officer, and shock plate body armor to protect officers against larger rounds of ammunition. Still ongoing is the renovation of the city’s rifle range, which Currey said is essential for officer training. Police have raised $100,000 through their foundation for improvements, but taxpayers may be asked to help with lead remediation of the 30-year-old facility. Currey asked for cash for that in 2016 and the money just was not in the budget.
Young also wondered about the burden and cost of archiving, cataloguing and retaining video records. “Once you begin this, you have to retain all of this, in perpetuity, I would assume,” Young said.
Currey explained that the department could spend $40,000 to $50,000 per year on a dedicated server to store the images, but the lease options he’s looking at would store all the data on a cloud, and that would be included in the per-camera lease package. He said a lease also would include replacement provisions for when cameras break or become obsolete.
“The lease is really the way to go, because you always have the updated equipment, and you have the cloud,” Currey said.
O’Connor concurred that, at this stage in the planning, the lease option does seem to be the way to go. “The information would go to the cloud so we would meet all the records retention requirements.”
Vero Beach resident Deborah Seeley, who has three law enforcement officers in the family, said she’s not anti-camera, but that she did want to raise some issues. “They don’t work well at night. There is an issue while you’re sitting in the car – you would have to rely on dash cams – and the angles are limited,” she said. “They show everything, and so everything becomes public record.”
Currey said if cameras were deployed, officers would be governed by General Orders which would dictate common-sense rules about when the cameras would be turned on and off, so that officers would not violate privacy laws.
