Buying Your Own Bodycam

[Sherman A. House DDS]

I am but a humble reserve patrolman on a small, underfunded department. I’m interested in buying my own bodycam. We have dashcams, but no bodycams.

I know that Axons are the gold standard. Has anyone else bought their own? Does Axon do individual officer sales?


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[TheNewbie]

We have Body Cam by Pro Vision. Video quality is good enough, but it has way too many buttons, and is not user friendly. I prefer the Taser cam.


Hopefully they will one day make a small, reliable, Body Cam that has plenty of storage and is easy to use.

[BehindBlueI's]

Personally, I would not. If I was really gung ho about it, I would clear it with whatever your version of city legal is. If you don't have city legal, default to "don't".

An audio recorder can end most complaints, is much easier to store the files for, and is much more difficult to hang you with. Your camera will see things you don't and vice versa. A recorder isn't as likely to hear things you didn't and vice versa.

[Sherman A. House DDS]

Personally, I would not. If I was really gung ho about it, I would clear it with whatever your version of city legal is. If you don't have city legal, default to "don't".

An audio recorder can end most complaints, is much easier to store the files for, and is much more difficult to hang you with. Your camera will see things you don't and vice versa. A recorder isn't as likely to hear things you didn't and vice versa.

Good points. I saved the model you use, somewhere in my notes. I’ll dig it out.


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[Erick Gelhaus]

What retention schedule would you use? Where would you store the video? What will the dept's stance on you doing it be? Are the first three big questions I'd ask - long before I looked at which one. After that you get into other personal policy questions.

Absent a dept camera, the old style micro / digital audio recorders would be a solid bet.

Take a look at the Harvard Law study done on the pursuit video from the Scott v. Harris SCOTUS ruling. The most interesting take-away I had from that was Who saw it was far more important than What they saw.

I've used both VieVu and two generations of Taser/Axon chest cameras. Each has pros & cons from a user perspective.

[UNM1136]

What BBI said.

I was involved in a lawsuit for use of force that ended in arbitration. The holding cell camera caught it all. The Bureau dismissed the civil rights complaint within hours of viewing the tape (that is another story). The City failed to keep a copy of the tape, leaving the only copy in the hands of the plaintiff's attorney. My attorney sat in my living room and went over the tape with me frame by frame. We agreed on what the tape showed before the use of force. The morning of arbitration the Judge claimed to have watched the tape on her home bigscreen in preparation for the arbitration. Several times and frame by frame and claimed she did not see what we plainly saw. This was a VERY pro LE judge, that my attorney was very pleased to draw. We were sitting in the courtroom the morning of arbitration, and my attorney wanted to play the video one more time. We did, and left it playing long enough to watch the prisoner's response to pepper spray, which was to square off, wipe his eyes, raise his hands, and say "bring it, motherfucker". Attorney's heads at both tables popped up. Neither sets of cousel had watched the video after the application of force, and were viewing the belligerance of the plaintif as though for the first time. Plaintiff's counsel started making excuses, and how there was no way to be absolutely sure that their client had said it. My attorney stammered a bit, clearly embarrassed at being caught flat footed. We won the arbitration, but I was very surprised at what everyone saw in the same video, and how a very important part of the video was skipped because everyone assumed that the moments leading up to the use of force were the only ones that mattered.

Also, in this state, audio and video are public records and subject to IPRA requests.

pat

[ssb]

Sending a PM on some things that may be applicable.

[Vista461]

I love my body cam, but that will probably end up being a LOT of data to save if you use it for every interaction. It could get expensive when you’re footing the bill.

[Lon]

Sherm I got one you can have. If you want it PM me. Uses a micro SD card.

[Sherman A. House DDS]

Thanks for the info, everyone.

One thing that I love about this place is that it gives the starting points for a lot of further investigation that often gets no attention when someone around the coffee pot says, “We should buy our orb badge cams like (BLANK) does!”

Great answers.


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[mtnbkr]

I'm not LEO and do not know if this sort of thing applies in Law Enforcement, but be sure you understand your controlling govt authority's regulations regarding data retention. Falling afoul of that could put you at greater liability than not having the recordings.

For example, in my company, we're only allowed to retain 2yrs of data unless we have a written exemption. This is checked by auditors yearly.

Chris

[TC215]

Sherman,

I would not recommend doing that if your department does not have some kind of written guidance and policy that dictates the use. Whatever you record is discoverable and could be subject to FOIA requests.

The Axon cameras are not cheap, and neither is the storage. I used a VieVu camera in the past (8-9 years ago) and did not care for it, though I’ve not used any of the newer versions.

[Sherman A. House DDS]

I’ll probably put my efforts into helping the Chief write a grant to get the entire department setup with the Axons and the data management system.


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[ssb]

I’ll probably put my efforts into helping the Chief write a grant to get the entire department setup with the Axons and the data management system.


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I think that's the smartest way to go.

[FNFAN]

I’ll probably put my efforts into helping the Chief write a grant to get the entire department setup with the Axons and the data management system.


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That's a great idea. I try never to do any work related data storage on a personal machine or work from a personal PC. Having your laptop and internet records subpoenaed for discovery is a "thing" some places. Even if you've got the most vanilla and innocent data use ever known it's a significant invasion of privacy.

I did see one personal use of a micro-cassette recorder save a guy some hassle once. Lady arrested for dui said she was "gonna tell the world", "you beat me up and f-d me." She then processed to bang her face on the Plexiglas cage, quite audibly on the tape and did in fact try to file those claims.

[UNM1136]

Heck, around here SWAT guys are getting phone records subpoenaed so someone can determine if they were screwing around on the 'net during their last DV refresher course. The more specialized your job, the less they figure you pay attention during the mandated biennial training.

pat

[John Hearne]

I haven't tested every body cam out there. With that said, I have been impressed with the Axon (Taser) offerings and the ones from Watch Guard. I"ve had two generations of the Axon Flex (head mounted) cameras and they've held up well. The Watch Guard is the concrete block of the body camera world. They are big, thick, and bulky but they are BUILT.

We ran Digital Ally for years but their latest in-car model sucked and their body cameras were fragile and had short lived batteries.

The Axon Fleet (in-car) option wasn't available when we were buying. We ended up with Watch Guard for both in-car and body camera. The two systems integrate very nicely. When you start recording on one thevice, the other starts as well. Classifying a video on the in-car classifies it on the body camera. Outside of storage demands (inherent with hi rez video) there isn't much to object to.

It' a minority opinion, but I really prefer a head mounted camera to a chest mounted camera. The head stabilizes the camera better and the head mounted camera give a better sense of what the officer might have seen.

[Vista461]

It' a minority opinion, but I really prefer a head mounted camera to a chest mounted camera. The head stabilizes the camera better and the head mounted camera give a better sense of what the officer might have seen.

We use the axon 2 body cameras now, but last year used the regular axon. I liked the head mount for the old camera for the view, but the headband irritated my ears after a few hours.

With the axon 2 I use the collar mount. It’s pretty stable and shows more than I think a chest one would, especially if you’re using a 2 hand grip and have your handgun out. Seems like a lot of videos I’ve seen with what seem to be chest cameras, the view gets partially blocked by arms/hands/gun.