For the Record: An earlier version of this article erroneously referenced a 5-year agreement with Netherlands based Axon Enterprise Inc. The consulting company is based out of Arizona in the U.S.
CLEARLAKE— With more than 500 criminal occurrences and more than 150 individuals arrested throughout this year in Clearlake, the local police department is seeking more alternatives to guarantee the efficacy of their operations, with the city council authorizing Chief of Police Andrew White to enter into a lease for upgraded body-worn cameras and a digital evidence management system.
The council discussed adoption of a 5-year agreement with Arizona-based Axon Enterprise Inc. and recommended the adoption of a resolution authorizing White to lease the needed equipment and extra data storage space.
During the November 3 Clearlake City Council meeting, Lieutenant Ryan Peterson said, “the current contract we have is going to be ending at the end of the year. The current cost is $19,000 a year.” He said that allows for limited storage capacity of cloud data, which is where all the department’s body-worn camera footage and other evidence collected using the Axon applications is stored. “That also does not provide us any actual access to Axon’s respond (app) or performance programs,” added Peterson.
According to Peterson’s report to the council, the initial cost would be $37,031 for the first year, and the cost would be $33,837 for each subsequent year for a total of $172,383 accumulated over five years. The cost difference for the first years is a 78% increase. “What’s included with this (is) unlimited cloud storage and access to their Axon Respond and Axon Performance. Right now, we don’t have the unlimited access for storage of response,” he said.
Peterson said the Axon Respond software “gives us GPS location of our cameras, which is a huge officer safety issue. We have currently, with our mobile data, terminals that are in our vehicles, a GPS location for that, but once an officer leaves that vehicle, we don’t know where they’re at. This would provide a GPS location of where the officer is. It also will provide (location information) if we activate our tasers at all – not deploy it, but just turning it on. It would send an extra alert, so if an officer was in peril or fighting or something, and not able to get to the radio to call out, it would send the alert to the dispatch, saying ‘hey, this has been activated. Start more officers.’”
Peterson added, “During large-scale events, like fires, you could actually coordinate. If you have people on foot, you’d be able to know where everyone is, to be able to coordinate those different things through the GPS.”
Axon Performance “allows you to have metrics to show an audit activity in the devices. All of our devices are connected: our tasers, our body cameras, and the in-car cameras that we’re going to be having next year. If the tasers turn on, our body camera turns on. If we activate our emergency lights in our vehicle, the in-car camera comes on, our body camera will come on, so it will be able to track all that on a management point and be able to look and see graphs and if it’s being used compared to incidents and if it’s being used appropriately and being done correctly. It will also select random videos out of all the cues for supervisors to review.”
“In 2017, we recorded about 2.8 terabytes of video or about 14,000 video clips. In 2018, it went to 18,000. We made a big push with our policy and everything else. Now, we’re averaging 25,000 to 26,000 video recordings a year. We’ve greatly exceeded, across the last term contract, the storage, so I think our contract was around eight terabytes of storage and we’re actually utilizing up to 18, according to the rep., and they never charged us any more for that. I guess we’re kind of paying back some of what we should have been paying before.”
White said the return on investment in the department’s opinion, is well worth it. “There’s an increase, but we’re also getting additional functionality,” he said.
The body-worn camera should be activated in traffic stop situations; calls for service involving domestic violence, sexual assault, suicidal persons, weapons, or potential use of force; pre-planned incidents; probation/parole searches; community caretaking; sweeps; forced entry; and any other contact that becomes adversarial. Officers can exercise discretion to respect privacy and discontinue recording when it outweighs any legitimate law enforcement interest in recording.
“We’ve had situations where victims of very serious crimes have not felt comfortable being recorded,” said White, adding that the decision in those cases is left to the officers. “It’s very difficult for us because the jury expects that, but we have that carve-out. Other situations will be like hospital settings, because we may have the person that we brought there just getting treated. We try to be respectful in those and not to be intrusive,” said the Clearlake police chief.
