East San Francisco Bay Area Police Get Body, Dash Cams

(TNS) — Antioch police soon will be equipped with body-worn and car cameras after the City Council unanimously approved a $1.4 million, five-year purchase contract with Axon Industries and $1.3 million for support staff to handle the new data.

The proposal was part of a police reform package Mayor  Lamar Thorpe  and the City Council advanced during a marathon special meeting two weeks earlier. The five-year contract with Axon covers all hardware and software updates and replacement parts.

"This is an important night," Thorpe said of the packed agenda, which also included other reform discussions. "So that passes, we are officially a city with body cameras — 10 years overdue, but we got it done."

Though many believe police body-worn cameras are vital to improving police accountability and transparency, Antioch police never had them because of the considerable cost and issues such as storage and usage policies. But after the police killing of  George Floyd  in Minneapolis, an uptick in local crime and two recent in-custody deaths, calls for police cameras here escalated.

A number of residents expressed their support at the council meeting for cameras, although questioned how they'd be used.

"Body cameras and dash cameras seem a great first step if used appropriately with clear guidelines and policies," said  Stefania Cargnello , an aunt of  Angelo Quinto , who died in December after an encounter with police during a mental health crisis. "They (cameras) bring truth, clarity and efficient resolutions in stressful situations that are clouded in controversy."

Diana Collins Puente , another aunt of Quinto, reiterated her family's support for police body-worn and dash cameras.

"However, they are also tools that can be implemented to prosecute ordinary people rather than implement police transparency and accountability," she said. "We strongly support body cameras but not at the expense of mental health crisis response. We believe that both can and must be done with urgency."

Resident  Manny Soliz  asked if the cameras could be later adapted to work with new Tasers with Bluetooth technology.

Others worried about the cost and said they did not want the expense to come from the police budget.

"Do not undermine the will of the citizens,"  Jackie Hooke  said. "Find the money without hurting the officers."

Thorpe, however, said City Manager  Ron Bernal  would make adjustments to the budget this first year to fund the cameras. The council in subsequent years would have to decide where the money would come from.

"We're not cutting any other programs to fund any of these programs; it's coming from the general fund reserves," the mayor said.

Besides the forward-facing body cameras, the proposed Axon program includes a car camera system with two cameras, one mounted inside and another in the backseat. Both can record audio inside and will upload data to a secure cloud-based storage system, according to Lt.  Joe Vigil .

The Axon camera platform allows officers to capture photographs, videos and audio evidence in the field and directly upload them, he said. Besides manually activating the cameras, officers must begin recording when the police car lights and siren are activated or a gun is removed from a holster, he added.

Vigil said Axom could get officers equipped and trained with the body-worn cameras in as little as 60 days, but the car cameras would take longer. Still, the entire program could be up and running by August.

"I appreciate the acceptance for a body-worn camera program and I very much look forward to implementing that program here at the Antioch Police Department and very much thank you or your support in this," police Chief Tammany Brooks said following the vote.

Brooks also asked for the addition of two records staff members — to be paid a total of $263,819 in salary and benefits the first year — to handle the increased records. The council unanimously approved his request.

In a related matter, the council voted 4-1, with Councilwoman  Tamisha Torres Walker  dissenting, to buy the police department three years of Peregrine Technologies software for $381,000, in addition to $15,000 for the new police camera software.

"It (Peregrine) provides a one-stop shop for organizing that data it pulls from all that information that we need from all those powerful platforms that we have to the user so they are able to vet that information and use it in real time," police Lt.  John Fortner  explained.

Fortner said the platform has only recently been made available and allows fact sharing with other agencies.

"We have never had a platform that pulls all of our technology together and allows us to share information securely and provide real-time information to officers in the field," he said.

"On a multitude of fronts — whether it is crime-solving, whether it's type of independent investigations — this is the technology that allows us to get this information seamlessly, to create a process to the district attorney and other agencies to ensure that information is getting there in a timely fashion," Thorpe added.

(c)2021 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.