Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) officers will soon be wearing body cameras again as the city council appears set to approve a contract for a second pilot program for the department, this time with Axon Enterprise Inc., the nation’s largest purveyor of body-worn cameras.
Previously known as Taser International, the maker of a number of non-lethal weapons, Axon rebranded this year and offered every law enforcement agency in the nation a one-year free trial of its body-worn cameras. Long Beach has seemingly taken it up on that offer.
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The city’s body-worn pilot has been cast as cost-free in a memo to the city council, with the terms of the contract running for one year with three optional 6-month renewal periods after the one-year pilot period eclipses.
A vote to enter into a new contract for a second pilot program comes months after the LBPD decided to scrap its previous supplier of body-worn cameras after that contract expired in November 2017. The previous contract, which was with Dell Inc./Utility Associates, cost the city $210,000 to outfit 40 officers in the city’s South and West Divisions with cameras.
However, last month the department said that a comprehensive review of the models provided by Dell showed that the technology did not “suitably meet the needs of the department and the City.”
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While the details of the program are yet to be determined, LBPD officials told the Post that the Request for Proposals contemplates up to 200 cameras. Also yet to be determined are the areas of the city where the cameras will be deployed, said LBPD spokeswoman Arantxa Chavarria.
Last month Axon faced some criticism when it announced that it was exploring the possibility of incorporating artificial intelligence into its body-worn cameras which would provide them with facial recognition capabilities.
It drew broad criticism from civil rights groups that said providing officers with cameras that could scan and recognize faces of those they see on patrol could create unethical biases and potentially dangerous situations caused by inefficiencies that exist in current facial recognition software.
While facial recognition software is not currently part of Axon’s offerings, its founder and chief executive, Rick Smith, told the Washington Post that the benefits were “too promising to ignore.”
“It would be both naive and counterproductive to say law enforcement shouldn’t have these new technologies,” Smith told the Washington Post. “They’re going to, and I think they’re going to need them. We can’t have police in the 2020s policing with technologies from the 1990s.”
Although the pilot program is projected to be free of costs stemming from equipment costs, the city is expecting staffing and support costs for three full-time positions to surpass $350,000. The memo projects that the figure could grow if the pilot program is turned into a permanent staple of the department which could require up to eight full-time positions.
The city council will discuss the pilot program during its next meeting on Tuesday, May 15. The council will meet at 5:00PM at the council chambers within city hall, located at 333 West Ocean Boulevard.
Stephanie Rivera contributed to this report.