WASHINGTON — After some delays, the Prince George’s County Police Department now hopes to start a body-worn camera program sometime in the first quarter of 2017.
They’re not calling the initial part a “pilot” program; they’re calling it the first phase.
“For us, ‘pilot’ means that we’re thinking about whether or not we should do it and we’re looking at it. We absolutely are invested in a body-worn camera program,” said Inspector General Carlos Acosta, who’s in charge of the program.
The department plans to give the cameras to one squad in each of the county’s seven police districts, or a total of 70– 80 officers.
Three different types of Panasonic brand cameras will be tested: chest-mounted, collar-mounted and helmet-mounted.
Some University of Maryland professors are already helping the department evaluate the program during the first phase.
“The Department of Sociology has partnered with us to study this rollout from before cameras get out on the street, as cameras get on the street and then for a period of time thereafter,” Acosta said.
The point is to find out whether using the cameras is a good thing for both the officers and the public.
“So far, we’ve spent roughly $200,000 to buy the cameras, to set up the servers, and to set up the cloud storage,” Acosta said.
He expects the study period to last six months to a year before the county considers expanding the program.
“If the county council approves a body-worn camera for the entire Police Department, it’s going to be, I’m going to guess, $3.5 [million] to about $5 million for a three-year program,” Acosta said.
What they still have to figure out is how much storage space they’ll need for the video generated by each officer’s camera, each day.
Also unclear is whether officers with cameras will need to return them to a police station every night. Each camera comes with its own docking station.
“I absolutely envision that as we roll [the program] out we’re going to be tweaking it, maybe substantially, as we run into problems or issues that we did not anticipate,” Acosta said.
