The City Council on Monday approved a five-year contract, with the option to extend it for three additional one-year terms, with Axon Enterprises, an Arizona-based company that develops technology and weapons for military, law enforcement and civilians.
Acting Police Chief Michon Morrow said the company already provides the department with Tasers, but the ones the department has are outdated and the company no longer supports them.
So they'll be getting 333 new, updated Tasers, along with 250 body cameras.
The department will pay $660,000 a year, plus an additional $42,600 to replace 20 in-car cameras a year. The in-car cameras are paid for with a self-supporting vehicle fund. The contract includes free upgrades as body camera technology changes and free replacement for broken cameras, Morrow said.
LPD will pay for the first year from savings from unfilled positions, Morrow said, and will include the cost for the tasers and body cameras in future budgets.
LPD now has fewer than 100 body cameras from a different company, which has been sold and no longer supports the type LPD uses, Morrow said. When the department began using body cameras in 2017, it had 150, but through the years some have broken.
Morrow said the department explored other companies, but Axon offered technology the department thought would be helpful.
For instance, the new body cameras have a larger field of vision, and footage is uploaded to cloud-based storage with easier access for both LPD and others in the criminal justice system, such as prosecutors or the court.
The system will also automatically turn on cameras when Tasers are used or if officers unholster their guns for any reason, Morrow said. Officers now are supposed to fill out reports if they pull their guns, but there are some instances when that doesn't happen, especially in cases when they aren't confronting a suspect, such as when they pull their guns while clearing a building
The new system will automatically connect video with the calls for service to which the officer was dispatched.
The system also records how many calls for service officers go on, so the department can see how many of those happened without their cameras on, Morrow said.
Currently, although street officers all have body cameras, they have to share them between shifts and there are not enough for large events or for investigators. Now, Morrow said, each officer on the street will have a camera, and he or she could also use them on off-duty jobs.
The body cameras the department has now will be available to the department's investigative units, Morrow said.
Morrow said she wants to start a dialogue with various stakeholders on the department's policy for making body camera footage public.
Now, it is at the discretion of the police chief, Morrow said.
While media organizations ask for body camera footage, so do other entities, she said.
It's important to balance the community's need for accountability, with privacy concerns of those being filmed during an incident and not tainting court proceedings, she said.
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