Peter Klaus holds latest model of WatchGuard Video body cameras designed for law enforcement officers. The individual body cameras will cost $995 per officer. However, there will be additional costs to the city to purchase an in-site server to store the data or the $10,000 to $11,000 per year to pay for cloud service.

WARREN — Both the administration and city council appear ready to begin the process needed to do serious exploration of purchasing a body camera system for the city’s police department.

The only roadblocks are picking the system to purchase, establishing protocols for its use, and how to pay for it.

WatchGuard Video, which is the supplier of the police department’s cruiser dash cam system, gave an overview of its body camera system during a council-as-a-whole meeting on Wednesday.

WatchGuard’s Peter Klaus told council members his company already has presented the administration proposals that include camera-only purchases, one with the city buying its own server to store the data collected, and one in which the city uses the cloud to store its data off site.

“We presented a camera-only proposal that will provide cameras for all of the city’s officers with a price range from $200,000 to $300,000,” Klaus said. “The cameras are $995 per unit.”

Looking at the cost consideration, new Councilman Ron White, D-7th Ward, who recently pushed for the cameras, questioned whether the city initially could buy fewer cameras on a trial basis and bring in more units as the officers become more proficient in their use and the city is able to find the funds to pay for them.

Klaus said cameras could be shared by officers working on different shifts. However, the police department must keep in mind the time that will be needed to download the data collected between shifts and the time necessary to recharge the camera batteries.

Battery life on the cameras are about 12 hours, according to Klaus.

“It will take, on average, five to 10 minutes to download the data collected to either the on-site or cloud- based servers,” Klaus noted.

As the primary sales representative for the company’s Kentucky and Ohio region, Klaus said he has about 400 law enforcement agencies using the company’s body camera system. The largest Ohio contract is with the Columbus Police Department. WatchGuard also represents police departments, such as Solon, Delaware, Dublin and Grove City, which has a police department similar in size to Warren’s 67 officers.

Councilman Mark Forte, D-4th Ward, questioned how the cameras are activated.

“We have systems that are manually activated by officers pressing a button once to begin the recording and twice to shut the system off,” Klaus said. “There also are systems that are activated whenever the vehicle’s light bars are turned on or some other triggering system.”

Councilman John Brown, D-at Large, questioned whether the body camera’s recording system will work in sync with the dash cam system already in the city’s patrol cars.

“No,” Klaus responded. “They are different systems.”

However, the company also sells a dash cam system that will sync with current and future versions of the body camera system, he said.

Safety Service Director Eddie Colbert questioned whether the city needs to hire someone whose job will be to redact video images when there are public records requests.

“It depends on the community,” Klaus said. “There are some communities that hired a full- or part-time person to do the redaction. There others that chose to have the redaction done by persons already in the police or city’s information technology departments.”

Law Director Enzo Cantalamessa suggested that it would be in the city’s best interest to have a person trained and dedicated to do redactions.

“If information is released through an open records request that is not required to be released under Ohio’s open records law, it could open the city up to possible lawsuits,” Cantalamessa said.

Police Capt. Rob Massucci said there is an officer already in the department whose job is, in part, responding to redactions required for open records requests for dash cam videos.

“Most of the open records requests we receive now are from lawyers and media organizations,” Massucci said.

Councilman Ken MacPherson, D-5th Ward, questioned whether the camera system can adjust to low light situations.

“The cameras see what the officer sees,” Klaus said. “It does not have night vision capability that adjust the lighting of the images.”

Councilwoman Helen Rucker, D-at Large, would like the administration to bring in other vendors to educate council about different body camera systems.

Councilman Cheryl Saffold, D-6th Ward, said because there has been an increased number of crimes and murders in the city in the last several years, especially in her ward, she will be asking council to provide additional money for new surveillance cameras to be placed throughout the city.

Massucci said the surveillance camera technology has improved significantly and the cameras the city already has have been beneficial in many types of investigations that led to convictions.

“I’m a big proponent of camera systems,” Massucci said.