Oakland Police Officers Equipped With Portable Cameras
OAKLAND (KCBS) – The Oakland Police Department began outfitting officers with its first set of lapel cameras on Tuesday.
The first 50 portable cameras have been deployed to officers in West and Central Oakland. They are about the size of a pager and are already being used by other agencies around the world.
Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts said it's all part of the department's ongoing commitment to transparency.
"There is a very clear picture that you can pick up everything. We can clip those to the dashboard," Batts said. "You can also see them from inside the car too, just like if you had in-car video."
KCBS' Anna Duckworth Reports:
Oakland Police Captain Ed Tracey said officers will be required to film every interaction, be it a traffic stop, walking stop, search or pursuit.
"At the end of the shift, they go down to the report-writing room and they download. They plug it in," said Tracey. "They can't edit it, they can't manipulate it, it is a secure server. It goes to our server and that's where we store it."
The cameras can record four hours of video at a time.
Tracey said all 350 of Oakland's field officers should be equipped with the lapel cameras by this summer.
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