New generation of body cameras for police approved by Birmingham City Council

The Birmingham Police Department will soon be deploying a new generation of body cameras following an agreement approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

Here is the item as it appeared on the agenda:

The new cameras will be purchased using federal grant money, Councilor Hunter Williams, chair of the Public Safety Committee, explained to the reporters gathered outside the Council chambers.

“One thing that leadership at City Hall is trying to do is make sure that all the body cameras have a way of communicating with other equipment, both in the officers’ vehicles and on their persons,” Williams said. “These cameras will allow us to see every time an officer deploys their taser. The police department will then have that footage to see what unfolded in that situation.”

On December 12, the Council approved a three-year agreement between the City and Axon Enterprise Inc. to purchase a new generation of Taser 7 devices for law enforcement.

Williams said it’s vital that Birmingham continues moving toward a more “data-driven approach” to policing. This new equipment checks those boxes, he said. “We want to make sure our officers are using crime data to help better determine where and when to deploy resources. This new generation of body cameras represents a big piece of that.”

As of 2018, over 10,500 law enforcement agencies across the country utilized body cameras. The National Institute of Justice recently conducted a randomized controlled trial on 400 police officers in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — “The research team found that officers with body-worn cameras generated fewer use-of-force reports and complaints from citizens compared to officers without body-worn cameras.”

Last July, the Birmingham City Council approved $1.5 million in funding for the Birmingham Police Department’s real time crime center which will be housed on the fourth floor of the Police Administration building. This will allow for real-time information sharing between officers in the field and those responding to a call, with footage being relayed from their body cameras.

“Our commanding officers at the real-time crime center will be able to see what’s happening on a ‘hot call’ and be able to disseminate that information to other officers responding to the scene,” Williams explained. “They’ll be able to draw a geofence, which means all the cameras in a geographical location will be automatically turned on. This will have a major impact on increasing officer safety and accountability.”

According to representatives with the BPD, this new technology will be deployed in the coming months.