The Justice Department has awarded almost $600,000 to the Tulsa Police Department to use for their body camera program.
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The grants are part of Pres. Barack Obama’s proposal to purchase 50,000 body cameras for law enforcement agencies within three years.
A Los Angeles Police officer is shown with an on-body camera during a demonstration for media in Los Angeles, January 15, 2014. Smaller agencies use body cameras and bigger agencies are testing them out, but the LAPD is poised to become the largest in the country to deploy the devices on a large scale.
“An additional $2 million will go toward training and technical assistance for agencies looking to develop or expand their programs”.
Interest in the technology soared after a series of fatal encounters between police officers and unarmed civilians, beginning previous year with the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
The U.S. Justice Department has awarded $599,200 to the Tulsa Police Department as part of the Body-Worn Camera Pilot Implementation Program. To obtain the grant money, each city must meet a 50 percent match.
The LAPD was one of 285 agencies to request funding, according to the Department of Justice.
Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges thanked the Obama administration for her city’s award, saying it would help transform its approach to policing.
“This vital pilot program is designed to assist local jurisdictions that are interested in exploring and expanding the use of body-worn cameras in order to enhance transparency, accountability and credibility”, Attorney General Lynch said.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA’s) Smart Policing Initiative will support police departments in Miami, Milwaukee, and Phoenix as they examine the impact of body-worn cameras on citizen complaints, internal investigations, privacy, community relationships and cost effectiveness.
“As we support local leaders and law enforcement officers in their work to protect their communities, we are mindful that effective public safety depends not simply on taking bad guys off the streets, but on winning – and keeping – the confidence of the people these officers are sworn to serve”, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in the news release.
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The body-worn cameras are being developed alongside a more than $800,000 expansion of the department’s access to in-car cameras. Furthermore, it’s designing a survey of prosecutors and public defenders to examine how the camera footage is used by courts in criminal cases.
