On Camera

UPDATED: Santa Fe police chief wants to buy lapel cameras

Santa Fe police officers could soon be wearing body cameras on their lapels as a way of protecting themselves against claims made by citizens during calls and arrests as well as improving departmental transparency.

The city's Public Safety Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the plan to purchase the 90 cameras for $71,000 and the matter moves next to the Finance Committee.

In the last several months, officers have been testing the cameras to see how they work, and now that the testing has been done, Police Chief Eric Garcia is asking that the cameras be purchased with money from two funds: the Edward Byrne grant, which will provide $29,156,  and the Police Property Tax Fund, which will foot $41,729.

Federal assistance is available, but Garcia wants to forgo federal aid and purchase the cameras as soon as possible, he writes in the May 4 memo on the proposal.

Back in December, President Barack Obama said he would make federal funds available in the wake of the Ferguson shooting, in which a police officer killed an unarmed teenager in the Missouri city; the altercation drew varying eyewitness accounts and jump-started the issue of racial profiling across the country.

While the City Different isn't exactly plagued with officer-involved shootings, Garcia says he thinks the cameras are well worth the money, because they could help reduce citizen complaints while holding officers accountable for their encounters, according to the memo.

However, there are three distinct areas where officers will be especially cognizant of their cameras so as to protect the rights of individuals: in calls involving medical issues, domestic violence and child abuse, he writes.

The police department plans to buy the cameras from the same company that provides the department its vehicle dashcams: Digital Ally, based in Lenexa, Kansas.

Garcia says he wants to do business with the same company, because both sets of cameras will be able to operate in sync with each other, and there will be no lost footage between the time the officers step out of their vehicles and the time they turn on their lapel cameras.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office already requires its deputies to wear body cameras as well, a practice that started more than three years ago.

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