The DA's office claims an entire agency would have to be created to download video, review and transcribe it, redact what the unions and the city deems "too sensitive for public release", and then administer / archive the data files.
A shirt pocket pen which records video and audio costs $150 on-line. I don't leave home without it.
I live in a city on the outskirts of Chicago.
Our PD wanted the bodycams. For their own protection the police wanted them.
The city council bid them out at around $65,000 each... Said it was too much, not in the budget and ended the discussion.
One of the groups I belong to began a fundraiser to buy them Go-Pro’s (I think around $300 each for the camera and accessory package). We raised enough to buy 15 of them, the officers that use them love them. We are starting another fund-raiser soon to buy another 30 this time around.
The video’s go to a private server, and that is causing some head-ache, because the police are not struggling with the notion that the video is their property, while the police want the video to be their property because the PD nor the city council own the camera’s.
This may end up in a court, as there is talk of the city council prohibiting the cameras. One member on the city council is pushing the idea that a cop cannot record a civilian without a wire-tap warrant or something like that.
I am not intimately familiar with all the workings (not enough to get into more than just glossy details), but was just commenting on both the extreme cost that the city council got for a bid, and the resistance from not the officers but the bureaucrats.
I’m shocked, shocked, that’s going on in Memphis. It’s so nice they can fleece the taxpayers (the few that actually pay taxes there) for something they won’t use.