Members of the Waterloo City Council's finance committee voted unanimously Monday to spend $90,000 to buy up to 150 body-worn cameras and upgrade the police video server.
"We're going to have them for reserves, for investigators, for everybody," said Safety Service Director Dan Trelka, who has been working for months to bring the project to fruition.
"We have three cameras in play right now that we are using to develop policies and procedures," he added.
Demand and interest in body cameras for law enforcement officers have been growing in recent years, but drew strong national attention following the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
Witnesses in the Brown case provided conflicting accounts of the shooting which could have been clarified had video footage been available.
Resident Jim Chapman, who regularly attends council meetings, noted body cameras could have helped resolve questions raised later in the council meeting by a group protesting the arrest of Marvin Spencer for interference with official acts.
"The quicker we get body cameras on more of our officers the problems will be more visible and the quicker we'll see them resolved," Chapman said.
Trelka said it may be some time before the vendor, L3 Communications, can fill the order in Waterloo because of the current demand. It took seven months to secure the three cameras currently in use, he said.
L3 Communications was chosen as the vendor without a bidding process because the company currently provides the in-car video system used by Waterloo police, which means the body cameras will be compatible with the servers.
Funding for the cameras comes from a $35,000 grant from the Black Hawk County Gaming Association, nearly $21,000 in donations from a campaign started by resident Don Miller, a $10,000 federal grant through the Black Hawk County Attorney's Office and some city bond funds.
In a separate action, council finance committee members approved spending $5,600 to train police officers in ways to keep public interactions from getting out of control.
Lt. Jim Glennon, a retired Lombard, Ill., police officer, will teach his class "Arresting Communications" in partnership with Hawkeye Community College during two one-day classes.
"It's de-escalation techniques, the old verbal judo," Trelka said. "It's a problem right now in the law enforcement industry."
Trelka noted the high-profile Sandra Bland case showed some officers need the training. That incident started as a routine traffic stop by a Texas state trooper that escalated into Bland being arrested and later dying in jail of an apparent suicide.
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