Body cameras on their way to Dallas police

By Tristan Hallman
The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS  — Dallas finally caught up to the "future of law enforcement" Wednesday when the City Council unanimously approved a $3.7 million body camera program to purchase 1,000 of the devices over the next five years.

Council member Dwaine Caraway, who helped calm tensions during a near-riot in 2012 in South Dallas after a shooting by police, said after the vote that the program will be "highly effective and needed" to build trust.

"I'm ecstatic about it," he said.

The vote — passed without discussion — came 19 months after Dallas Police Chief David Brown proclaimed the devices as "the future of law enforcement," and less than a year after several controversial police use-of-force incidents elsewhere made the gadgets go from a luxury to a national necessity.

The city will buy the cameras from Taser International. The $3.7 million will also pay for video storage and maintenance of the cameras.

The department will start with 400 cameras and add more over the period of the contract, Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence said Wednesday. He said police officials are still working out the details about who will get the cameras, but the first 200 will go to patrol officers — likely on a volunteer basis. The other half could go to officers who work in the field at jobs such as on task forces.

Lawrence said Dallas' camera distribution, however, is unlikely to follow the same strategy as that of the Fort Worth Police Department, which started its body camera program in 2013 by giving them to rookies out of the academy.

"There is going to be a range of officers from all experience levels who get the cameras," Lawrence said.

Police said they hope the 1,000 cameras will allow one to be at every incident.

But Caraway said the 1,000 cameras aren't enough. The department has 3,500 officers.

"It's never enough," Caraway said. "Everybody needs to have one. Anyone coming into contact with citizens of this city ought to have that level of protection and being comfortable in dealing with law enforcement."

The state could provide more funding to provide additional cameras. State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, and Dallas police officials supported a body camera bill in the Legislature that would provide grant money for departments.

Both the House and Senate have passed the bill, but Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to sign it.

But the way the grants will be funded is muddled.

And while Dallas police officials have been working to help pass the bill, Lawrence said he has no idea what the grant process will end up looking like and whether there will be enough money for departments across the state. That will be up to the governor's office.

Lawrence said the city will continue to look for other funding.

Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk previously offered to pay for cameras for some police departments within the county with money seized from criminal investigations. But little has happened on that front during her first six months in office.

Dallas police had already been field-testing body cameras. Brown began looking into the devices after he fired an officer for a questionable 2013 shooting that was captured on surveillance video.

But police officials have cautioned that cameras are not "a panacea" and offer a limited perspective.

Still, council members Wednesday lauded the coming of body cameras as a help to officers, prosecutors and average people.

"The vast majority of cops are doing a great job, and body cameras will demonstrate that," council member Philip Kingston said. "And on the off chance there is a bad interaction, and we need the evidence, we'll have it."

Copyright 2015 The Dallas Morning News