GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The Green Bay Police Department and the Brown County Sheriff’s Office could have body cameras sooner than you think.
The issue of equipping officers and deputies with body-mounted cameras was discussed during a Wednesday meeting between the two departments, one day after the Green Bay Packers agreed to step up to help provide funding for such a system in Brown County.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of weeks, I think it’s a matter of months before we’re going to see cameras,” Police Chief Andrew Smith told WTAQ after the meeting. “I mentioned in the meeting that it could be sometime after the first of the year.”
Smith says the momentum, both in the community and the department, along with the financial backing to purchase body cameras is here, and it’s the perfect time to get it done.
A body camera system, however, isn’t cheap. They can cost well into the millions of dollars.
“The camera itself is probably the cheapest and least important part of the whole process,” Smith explained. “What’s more important is how you get that video evidence into some type of storage system, and how do you store it and retrieve it?”
Storing hours and hours of body camera footage can be an extremely expensive affair. It requires massive server infrastructure and data handling capacity, along with the cybersecurity needed to keep it all safe from intrusion. Privacy, too, is a factor: police are generally not allowed to distribute unblurred footage of children or the inside of people’s homes.
Smith, however, says it will be worth it.
“I wore a body camera when I was a police officer in Los Angeles. It was great. It was something that I felt good about,” said Smith. “It was really not an issue.”
Wednesday’s discussion also included the possibility of including Ashwaubenon Public Safety into the mix for the body camera system as well. De Pere Police already use body cameras.
Comments