MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The interim Memphis police director said the city is heading in the right direction when it comes to expanding its body camera program.
Memphis could start rolling out its long-delayed body camera program next month.
“Body-worn camera, we’re going to expand this to one station starting with one shift, so we’re going to basically go from three users to one station and one shift, and we’d like to start that in April of 2016,” Officer Dennis Evans with MPD said.
We’ve all heard the city and police department give dates before only to miss their target. It’s why the city said it put together a more comprehensive plan this time.
“How we want to roll it out is we want to start with 10 and then go from 10 from moving on from the next 10 and so on so we’re not just going to throw it at the whole shift, we’re going to start 10 and 10 more and so on,” interim police director Michael Rallings said.
Right now, three officers are using body cameras, and police say there’s a boatload of footage to go through every day. It’s why the city wants to hire 10 analysts before expanding cameras to cover more officers.
“Now we only have three users for our body cameras right now, we’ve had 1,550 total videos captured of three users, the total hours of those video are 300 and the average capture per day is 11.5 so that’s what we’re capturing per day with three users,” Evans said.
While police and the city seem to be readying for an April rollout, there’s no word from Shelby County district attorney Amy Weirich. She’s the one who put the brakes on the plan last year, saying her office wasn’t prepared.
The department has more than 150 squad cars collecting more than 47,000 videos.
Every time they make a video, they have to make two. The goal is to have the analysts hired by April 16.
