If any piece of equipment symbolizes the modern world of law enforcement, it could well be the body-worn camera.

As they rose in prominence alongside smartphones, body-worn cameras enabled police officers to record incidents from a law enforcement perspective. Agencies in various countries began to pilot the technology, and, with the goal of enhancing transparency and accountability for both officers and civilians, the U.S. federal government poured tens of millions into body-worn camera programs for agencies around the United States.

However, as relatively new devices, body-worn cameras have, to date, provided inconclusive data on their effectiveness. At the same time, concerns over privacy and other issues began to emerge in the discussion around body-worn cameras.

“[Body-worn cameras] came into the marketplace as a police tool to increase transparency,” said Paul DiModica, chief revenue officer for Equature, a Southfield, Michigan, software company focusing on public safety. “But now we’re at a tipping point. We’re at a lot of tipping points. In the last 18 months, because of shootings and demonstrations, there was a perception that there wasn’t enough transparency. We felt like this was incorrect. There were strengths and weaknesses with a first-generation device. People just wanted more.”¹

As public debate continues—shaped by the same high-profile incidents that are driving much of the debate around law enforcement as a whole—officers in the field or in administrative roles are grappling with a different kind of challenge. As with the video-enabled smartphones in the pocket of nearly every adult, it is hard to imagine a future that does not include body-worn cameras. But for all the video footage the cameras capture, the day-to-day challenge lies in leveraging body-worn camera videos into meaningful, actionable information.

Manufacturers and solution providers say they have learned valuable lessons from the first generation of body-worn cameras. New hardware and software are smarter, they say, and are ready to transform body-worn cameras and the data they produce into the tools many have long envisioned—something that makes the work of law enforcement easier and more effective, not harder and more controversial.

The cameras themselves are continuously evolving, but a major part of the equation is the software that helps departments make video more useful—both in the moment and after a video has been taken.

“Over the last couple of years, there were a lot of players who got into this space,” said Kevin Mullins, CEO of Intrensic, a law enforcement technology company headquartered in San Mateo, California. “What has happened since then is we’ve seen two separate needs come out. One is a need for video capture, and the other is for evidence management. Law enforcement discovered they were producing thousands of records every month. So how do you handle that? That’s where our expertise is.”²

More Options During an Incident

The effect of body-worn cameras remains inconclusive. In October 2017, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, released a study showing that body-worn cameras had no major effects on use of force, civilian complaints, officer discretion (as measured by arrests for disorderly conduct), the likelihood of a case’s prosecution, or case disposition.³

According to experts, this may be a reflection not so much on the cameras themselves as with the procedures that occur during and after the video is recorded. That is something that companies like Equature are aiming to address.

“We just rewrote the platform,” DiModica said. “We rewrote it from a regular body-worn camera approach to a body-worn camera approach that uses Android and works in real time.”⁴

This new functionality allows users to activate cameras from remote locations and capture footage of incidents as they are happening. Long known for public safety dispatch software, Equature recently created Interactive Policing, a real-time video and audio recording platform that connects a body-worn camera to the officer’s command and control dispatch center.

To illustrate how it works, DiModica uses a dramatic and tragic example: the October 1, 2017, shooting spree in Las Vegas, Nevada, that left 58 concert-goers dead.

“Las Vegas had 150 first responders on the scene, and the best video anyone saw was from peoples’ personal cellphones,” DiModica explained. “If [Interactive Policing-enabled cameras] were worn by first responders, you could have had 150 different views… If there are five officers chasing an active shooter, you would have five video feeds coming in simultaneously in real time. And you can do that from the command position.”⁵

An increased connection between body-worn cameras in the field and those working in command and control capacities has extra benefits. One is that the video and other data transmitted from the field are sent into the cloud, offering extra security. A built-in GPS capability can help locate cameras and even officers, if necessary.

“If you attack me as an officer, and my camera gets destroyed, usually that means that all the footage gets destroyed,” DiModica said. “But with this it goes to the cloud… A GPS system means you can find the camera and the officer. No officer is ever alone.”⁶

More Options After an Incident

If body-worn cameras are truly going to retain their recently won recognition as a tool for greater public safety, more evidence will need to be produced that cameras themselves can produce evidence.

To Mullins and Intrensic, meeting that goal means more thoughtful management of the videos after they are taken.

“How do you bundle the information, aggregate it, archive it, retrieve it, audit it, and share it?” Mullins said. “What’s the cost of managing this data? Just putting it in a folder somewhere, or archiving it using a table and putting that somewhere can be burdensome. We’re treating [the data] as evidence, and we’re building cases on it, and we’re pushing it out electronically to a prosecuting agency.”⁷

The name of Intrensic’s solution, Evidence on Cloud, contains one of its key attributes—cloud storage. Unlimited, secure storage on the cloud enables agencies to easily store as many video files as needed and makes those files far easier to retrieve when the time is right compared with other, more ad hoc setups. The scalable solution makes it workable for large and small agencies at all levels, and unlimited sharing makes it easy to transfer files to other stakeholders. A chat feature inside the software also facilitates easier communication between parties.

Although it is an open-source network that can be configured to work with a range of body-worn cameras, Intrensic’s official hardware partner for Evidence on Cloud is the manufacturer GoPro. Long well known for its high-quality work in action photography and the consumer market, GoPro’s law enforcement camera models have delivered the same quality to police work.

Hardware Makes Advances

GoPro, which, like Intrensic, is based in San Mateo, California, has quickly established itself as a key player in body-worn cameras. But there are plenty of other leaders in the space—and hardware continues to evolve even as software solutions begin to coalesce.

Safariland VIEVU, based in Seattle, Washington, is a widely recognized leader in the field of body-worn cameras. Its newest model, the LE5, uses efficient wireless technology and is integrated with holster-camera auto-activation. Although it has not yet been released for sale, the LE5 is available for advance reservations on the Safariland VEIVU website.⁸

“At Safariland, we are committed to providing law enforcement with the most innovative and effective solutions,” said Jason Wine, vice president of engineering and technology at VIEVU. “With our deep understanding of the connected officer, innovation is focused on safety and performance. Our CAS auto-activation technology is an essential tool to enhance officer ability, removing the decision-making process and allowing them to focus on the task at hand. The selectable options on our new LE5 body-worn camera are core elements. Both are defining the way law enforcement agencies integrate connectivity and technology into policing.”⁹

Another provider, WatchGuard Video, has long been known for delivering a wide array of video tools to the public safety community. The Allen, Texas, company’s newest body-worn camera model, the Vista XLT, is a two-piece, lightweight system that was built to be highly adaptable to different assignments and even uniform types.¹⁰

Software continues to evolve, and high-tech camera features can be highly desirable, but the most valuable keys to a body-worn camera—affordability and reliability—remain constant, according to Andrew Beach, director of sales and service for PRO-VISION Video Systems, a Byron Center, Michigan, company and leading body-worn camera provider.¹¹

Each PRO-VISION body-worn camera model costs less than $300, Beach said. But that doesn’t come at the expense of features like a full-shift battery life, night-vision mode, ease of use, and durable construction.

“It’s got to be affordable,” Beach said. “You should not have to pay $600 or $800 for a camera. The touchstone of a good product is that you don’t need a 10-day training session to learn how to use it… You don’t want to overthink it.”¹²

Body-worn camera providers are listening to the discourse around body-worn cameras and engineering new hardware and software solutions to allay concerns by the public and law enforcement. As the profession works to figure out the place of body-worn cameras and the videos they produce in police work, the technology industry is working to make sure law enforcement has access to the best options currently possible. ♦

Notes:

¹Paul DiModica (chief revenue officer, Equature), telephone interview, November 29, 2017.

²Kevin Mullins (CEO, Intrensic), telephone interview, November 30, 2017.

³David Yokum, Anita Ravishankar, and Alexander Coppock, Evaluating the Effects of Police Body-Worn Cameras: A Randomized Controlled Trial (Washington, DC: The Lab @ DC, Metropolitan Police Department, and Government of District of Columbia, 2017).

⁴DiModica, interview.

⁵DiModica, interview.

⁶DiModica, interview.

⁷Mullins, interview.

⁸Safariland VIEVU.

⁹Jason Wine (vice president, engineering and technology, VIEVU), email, December 4, 2017.

¹⁰WatchGuard Video.

¹¹Andrew Beach (director, sales and service, PRO-VISION Video Systems), telephone interview, November 30, 2017.

¹²Beach, interview.

Please cite as

Scott Harris, “Body-Worn Cameras: Video Discussion Goes Beyond the Camera,” Product Feature, The Police Chief (February 2018): 42–44.