KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — Kalamazoo’s Department of Public Safety has spent the last year road-testing body camera systems and will ask city commissioners on Monday to approve a contract to buy enough cameras for every officer and a number of spares.
They’re asking for commissioners to sign an over $200,000 deal with a Texas-based firm.
Chief Jeff Hadley said he contacted nine different manufacturers to evaluate systems. They tried out the ones that seemed to be the best, testing them for picture quality, durability, ease of use and other criteria.
Hadley said a big issue is data storage and retrieval. He estimates each officer on patrol will have their cameras on for about four hours a shift. 40 officers splitting two shifts each day, seven days a week can amount to a big storage requirement and a lot of work, especially if accurate records need to be kept of what is on each recording.
Commissioners have budgeted $76,000 for the equipment, and the city has received a $76,000 matching grant from the Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority. An anonymous grant to the Kalamazoo Foundation will provide the other $50,000 needed to make the purchase.
Hadley says they still need to finalize the policies for using the cameras, train the officers and do an educational campaign to let the public know what the limitations of the system will be.
The plan is to start putting the cameras on patrol officers this summer.
