City patrol cars to be equipped with cameras

Public outrage nationwide over incidents such as the shooting of a reportedly unarmed teen last year by police in Ferguson, Mo., and the shooting death of a fleeing suspect in April in North Charleston, S.C., that resulted in murder charges against a police officer have prompted police departments across the country to take measures to increase transparency with the public.

That includes the purchase of video cameras for officers’ uniforms and patrol vehicles, and in recent days, the Holton City Commission approved the purchase of seven police car cameras for the city’s police department.

Holton Police Chief Gale Gakle presented commissioners on May 18 with a $35,140 estimate from Watch Guard of Allen, Texas, for the purchase of seven high-definition, in-car cameras that monitor activities outside the patrol car through the windshield, as well as inside the car. Commissioners approved the purchase, noting that the majority of funds used for the purchase came from a memorial donation and from the police department’s “seizure fund.”

Gakle said the video cameras will be installed and programmed to “record constantly,” but recordings of certain instances can either be activated manually or automatically, such as when a police car’s “light bar” is turned on to pull over a motorist or investigate a scene. The cameras can be programmed to save video footage that occurs before the recording is activated “in case we need it for additional evidence,” he said.

Recordings will be saved to a USB “jump drive” and transferred to a computer that is dedicated to saving such recordings, Gakle noted. “A limited number” of police personnel will then have access to the video recordings as stored on the computer, he said, adding that officers will not be allowed to edit recordings made during their patrols.

DVD copies of video recordings will be made available to the Jackson County Attorney’s Office or to defense attorneys on request. Gakle said some attorneys can be charged for copies of video recordings, while recordings that are subpoenaed by courts must be provided at no charge.

Holton City Manager Bret Bauer said the purchase of the cameras has been something that city officials have “gone back and forth on” for some time. But with the incidents occurring in such locations as Ferguson and North Charleston, Gakle added that video cameras should be required equipment for police.

“In today’s climate, I don’t know that any police department should be without them, to be honest,” Gakle said. “There’s been so much controversy with law enforcement and interaction on different occasions, obviously, so this will give you the exact story of what happened. And if there was an officer in the wrong, we’ll know it.”

Commissioner Twila White, who later made the motion to approve the purchase, agreed, telling Gakle, “if your officer knows he’s on camera, he’ll perform better.” Commissioner Dan Brenner also lended his support to Gakle in the purchase, noting that most police departments around the country are utilizing body-mounted video cameras as a means of augmenting the cameras they have in their patrol cars.

Of the $35,140 used to purchase the cameras, only $12,451.74 came from the city’s coffers — namely the city’s equipment reserve fund, which, according to figures provided by Bauer, had more than $270,000 in it. Another $5,266.98 came from the police department’s “seizure fund,” which comes from the sale of property, such as motor vehicles and firearms, seized during the commission of a crime.

Nearly half of the purchase — $17,421.28 — was covered by a donation from the estate of the late Mildred Tangeman, a Holton resident who died in 2013 and left double the amount used in the purchase of the video cameras to the city in her will, Bauer said. He added that the amount of Tangeman’s total donation was to be split evenly between Holton’s police and fire departments.

During Gakle’s visit with commissioners at the May 18 meeting, the police chief also showed members of the commission new protective vests that had recently been purchased and discussed the recent visit from representatives of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church who came to “protest” graduation ceremonies at Holton High School.