The City Council in Portland, Oregon, approved $2.6 million for permanent police body cameras in a unanimous vote, a crucial step toward the city no longer being among the last major U.S. police agencies without the technology.
All of the city’s roughly 800 uniformed officers who interact with the public will have body-worn cameras by the summer, after training and further negotiations with the police union, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Wednesday.
But only around 300 patrol officers will be required to wear them routinely on their shifts, the news outlet reported.
Roughly 500 other sworn members, including detectives and sergeants, will put on their cameras when they interact with the public, said police spokesperson Mike Benner.
With 800 officers, comes out at about $3.25k per camera.
I understand there’s other equipment like storage servers, extra batteries, replacements, but it’s still quite a bit more than I’d expect
Might include earmarked money for future maintenance or anticipated growth?
Probably the mentioned training as well
And the manditory super-sized markup for a contract with the deep coffers of a gov’t entity.
Only military expenditures are worse.
Storage may seem cheap but video from 800 officers for 40+ hours per week takes up a fuckton of storage. They also have to pay people to maintain the infrastructure for all that too.