Iowa City Police to have body cameras within 3 months

IOWA CITY - The Iowa City Police Department is three months away from equipping all of its officers with body cameras.

In a memo to city manager Tom Markus, Police Chief Sam Hargadine said the police department has selected a vendor, L3 Mobile Vision, for it's body camera needs. The department is moving forward with a purchase of 84 cameras. The cameras will cost $33,516, plus an additional $4,490 for supporting infrastructure and $3,700 for additional cable work, according to the memo.

The total cost of just under $42,000 will come from asset forfeiture, Hargadine said.

That total is far less than what was originally anticipated. Last September, the Iowa City Council agreed to allocate $211,000 for body cameras and a digital storage system. However, in November, Hargadine asked the council to repeal that decision based on information he learned at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference. Hargadine said new technology made it possible for the body cameras to work in sync with the department's existing dash camera recording software, rather than require it's own system.

Hargadine said Friday that, although the camera may cost less than expected, it's not an inferior model when compared with competitors.

'We've tested it,” he said. 'It's one of the sturdier products on the market. We're going to roll it out and at a significant cost savings. I would put these cameras up against the other models.”

In his memo, Hargadine said the shared system would decrease the expected workload for department staff when obtaining video for court purposes and eliminate the need for additional training for officers.

'The hardest part of the equation of all of this is when you've got an entire department that's recording something and finding that video five years from now,” Hargadine said. 'How do you index that video? How do you throw out what's worthless and keep what's evidence? That's the hard part.”

Hargadine said he expects two receive the cameras in two months and complete inventory, set up and training on the cameras within another month. Some officers have already been equipped with cameras.

'We're up and going with the ones we have,” he said. 'In three months, we'll have the big delivery and they'll be on everybody.”

The final hurdle is crafting a policy for the cameras that will govern their use and also strive to protect citizen's privacies. Hargadine said the department has been looking for guidance from the American Civil Liberties Union or Attorney General's Office, but so far no rulings have been made on open records versus the public's expectation of privacy in their homes.

'No one has really thought that through,” he said. 'There's a lot more to it than ‘everything is an open a record.'”

Hargadine said if the ACLU, Attorney General's Office or legislature doesn't offer any guidance, the city will write its own policy.