The Soldotna and Kenai Police Departments are researching the use of body cameras on their forces.
Both cities have are testing a couple of versions of the cameras but Soldotna Police Chief Peter Mlynarik said one challenge is where to store those mass amounts of data if each officer were to have one.
Mlynarik: “Some vendors or at least one, they have their own third party server or cloud that you can use so you wouldn’t have to be responsible to build a server that’s big enough to handle all of that so that’s an option. They are responsible for storing the data even though you have access to it.”
Soldotna and most other law enforcement agencies already use audio recordings and the cameras might offer more insight into what’s happening when people aren’t talking.
Mlynarik: “I think one of the misconceptions is that a camera too captures everything an eye does but that’s not true either. The human eye and where you’re looking and everything is probably more perceptive than a camera, the camera only looks at what it’s pointed at so it’s not a perfect solution but it does enhance the audio for sure.”
Mlynarik said there is one thing that must be done before his department gets body cameras for each officer.
Mlynarik: “One of the things that’s really important to do before you get something like this is to develop a policy for it because once you interject video into something in your contacts everyday, you know not every place is appropriate to have the video running. Audio like you said, you’re not seeing it it’s just sound. So it’s really important is having a good policy and that’s kind of the step we’re at now.”
Neither Soldotna or Kenai had an estimate as to when they might purchase the units for all officers but both said they have been researching them for a number of years.