Good Question…
Timothy Watson of the “I’m Surrounded By Idiots” blog raises a very good question…
How does little old Caroline County (where I live) with a population of 27,000 have dash cameras in all their police vehicles but Prince William County doesn’t?
That question needs to be posed to PWC Police Chief “Good Time” Charlie Deane. Last time I checked, Caroline County did not have any anti-illegal alien measures in place, so there obviously is no need for such cameras to defend against potential civil rights lawsuits. So why do they need cameras? Perhaps they realize the value that they bring in terms of gathering evidence for prosecutors and in protecting the men and women of our police force. Why hasn’t “Good Time” Charlie realized that yet? Why does he continue to maintain that such cameras apparent sole function is for defense against lawsuits? Why didn’t he request cameras years ago to help our police officers? Just one more example of him falling down on the job.
Questions need to be asked and answers compelled.
I’m not asking for much here. I only want a Police Chief who will do his job to faithfully uphold the law without being explicitly told to do so. I only want a Police Chief who realizes that going after the small, quality of life crimes deters more serious crimes from happening by creating a more inhospitable environment for lawbreakers. I only want a Police Chief who would have been forward thinking enough to want cameras installed in patrol cars years ago in order to provide evidence against criminals in prosecutions and help with the physical protection of our police officers instead of only adding it on now as a means solely to defend against potential lawsuits.
Those are three basic areas where Deane sorely lacks and that is why I have no confidence in him to lead this department anymore.
Filed under: Prince William County Politics
Well this can get complicated. But let me start off by saying, that I am my department’s Project/Program Manager for our in car cameras. I have a LOT of experience with them. Years.
The answer to the question above is simply… cost. I will try to explain.
Two Conservative (don’t have a link handy), had a post up questioning Chief Deane’s estimate of 3.1 million dollars for in car cameras. And of course, this question quoted here.
First, your off the shelf “handycam” won’t work. For long. They may work for a short period of time, but the sensors and electronics in the handycam isn’t designed for being mounted to a car and then subjected to the shocks a police vehicle may induce. Wrecks, jumping curbs, high speed maneuvers and such. They just can’t withstand the beating for long. So a $300 cam is out.
Enter the in car camera designed around this environment and you are talking anywhere between $4000 and $8000 dollars per depending on the vendor and specifications.
Storage media is another concern. VHS? 8MM? CD/DVD? Flash media? Hard Drive?
Options. Crash sensors? How are they activated? With the lights? At speed? Manually?
Audio recording? In car only? Belt microphone on the officer? Microphone for each officer or a pool of mics to be checked in and out? Mics assigned to cars?
Evidential storage concerns. Chain of custody? Who has access to the recorded media? Who can testify in court that it has not been altered? Where is it stored? Server? Media cards? Tapes? CD/DVD? This all has to be considered.
How does the video get to the storage location? Network? Wireless? More routers? Infrastructure to support this? Personnel?
What are the storage policies required by the state and federal government for keeping evidence video? 3 years AFTER the case has been adjudicated. What is the department policy for keeping non-evidence video? 30/60/90 days? Who deletes?
How much video is going to be recorded? 2 hours per shift, per car, per day? 3 shifts? What resolution?
Installation costs for the cameras and the infrastructure to support the additional network load.
Server? SAN? NASD? We estimated a “working” storage requirement of 500 gigs per installation MINIMUM. PWC’s 270 cars would be 135 TERRAbytes of storage based on our formula for our agency.
Storage expandability. Can we increase storage on the fly?
I am not going to go into a lot of detail about my agencies program, but I can tell you that Chief Deane’s 3.1 million is not so far out of the ball park that its crazy. And he included a dedicated employee to review and manage the video.
When I ran Chief Deane’s publicized requirements through my spread sheet, I came up with about 2.5 - 2.8 million depending on which options were checked. And my spread sheet places the cameras at the lower 1/3 of the 4000-8000 dollar range.
So… to answer the question above. How many cars does “lil ole Caroline County” field? Are they within state/federal guidelines for storage? Do the courts just “allow” their methods as acceptable?
As far as the “why they are used” question. My answer is “all three of the possibilities…” plus.
1. Evidence against a criminal.
2. Evidence against an officer.
3. Evidence protecting the officer.
4. Proofs of compliance for accredidation.
5. Training (how to DO something and how NOT to DO something)
6. And of course, I would be lying to you if I didn’t include “entertainment”. We just like to laugh at each other. Of course this is NOT an official use.
7. Help in identifying problems, traffic, neighborhoods and such. Quality of life concerns.
The list could go on forever.
I hope this sheds a little light on the issues. I will be more than happy to entertain questions HERE about this but I will not reveal actual numbers, tactics, installations or such. If I can’t answer your question, I will tell you and try to give you a reason why.
If Caroline County can equip their vehicles with cameras, why can’t Prince William County? Prince William County has an exponentially higher tax base than Caroline County.
The smart thing would have been four years ago, when they started buying new vehicles, have the cameras installed in them. By now, most of the vehicles would be equipped with the cameras.
I believe that is what our Sheriff did when he came in (in 2004) and I’m pretty sure all (admittedly, a few might not) the patrol vehicles have cameras in them now.
I totally agree with your reasons for having the cameras Scott. They aren’t just there to collect evidence on suspects. They can be used to confirm or refute the claims made in a complaint by a citizen/suspect/arrestee.
It should be noted that Rob Wittman has an earmark request for $1,435,640 “to equip all 270 police operations vehicles with an in-car camera system” in Prince William County (Link)
[...] at Virginia Virtucon asks some good questions regarding Prince William County’s "in car camera" [...]
The installation of the cameras we purchased (are purchasing) are SIMPLE retrofits. Commercially, about $200 bucks per car. Or I can do it myself at about an hour per car.
While I agree, the best way is to install the cams as they come “off the line”. Some, like the ones we are using, it doesn’t really matter. They are out of service for a very short period of time and turned around.
I guess my biggest point is to educate folks who are upset with Deane. I have no dog in that fight whatsoever so what I am aiming to do is make sure when people speak out, they do so with a similar amount of knowledge that Deane may be walking in the room with.
In other words, there is really no need to “defend” his price tag. It’s pretty accurate given the addition of a person dedicated to the camera cause.
Using “preventing law suits” as the sole purpose is incredibly narrow minded.
I think it shows incredibly poor planning that just now he’s arguing that the Police Department needs cameras for their vehicles.
I have no problem with the costs of this. I agree with you, Scott, that it is probably in the right ballpark. I also agree with you, Timothy, that this showed incredibly poor planning especially since a whole new fleet of police cars has started coming off the line for the county. Finally, my big beef is with the narrow usage that Deane has put forth for these cameras. Had he the vision that either Scott or Timothy has exhibited here, he should have ordered cameras years ago.
Maybe Chief Deane assumes that collecting evidence would be a waste of time with the current Commonwealth’s Attorney. He could finally be onto something.
And I agree that a narrow “usability” scope is what is causing him so much grief.
Had he not tied the cameras in so closely with the enforcement of the immigration enforcement question, combined with his other actions, there probably wouldn’t be as much “push back” over it.