It’s been nearly a year since the idea of body cameras for the Redding Police Department first came before the City Council. But even after a lengthy discussion Tuesday night, there are still more questions than answers.
There are no statewide regulations to base the city policy on body cams. Chief Robert Paoletti says he’s been consulting with other departments and even the ACLU for guidance. Questions about privacy for both the officers and others remain to be answered.
Even though the cameras themselves will be paid for with asset forfeiture money, Paoletti says the ongoing costs of an officer to maintain and store the video are not in the department’s budget.
“Since we started looking into these cameras have gone from $1,000 a piece down to $300-$400 apiece depending on which vendor you go with,” Paoletti said. “I think its best to go with a cloud storage environment because it’s scalable.”
That means the department would only pay for what it uses rather than purchasing a large in house server. But the cost would still be about $100,000 per year for storage.
Councilmember Missy McArthur, one of the most vocal proponents of the cameras, said she’d like to get started sooner rather than later, and brought up the idea of a trial run.
“We can kind of work out the bugs before they’re official,” she said.
And even thought they don’t know how they will pay for it, the council voted to accept Paoletti’s report and asked him to meet with the city attorney to hammer out a guideline that is acceptable to everyone, including the police union, and move forward with the plan.
