The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday approved a $600,000 grant received from the U.S. Department of Justice that will go toward developing, implementing and evaluating a body-worn camera program over the next two years.
Total cost of the program will be about $1.5 million, the Sacramento Police Department said, coming from matching funds. The program will continue through fall 2017.
The grant will help fund two new IT support specialists who will manage the body-worn camera technology and inventory. Sacramento PD expects it will spend $370,000 for equipment and nearly $700,000 for data storage. Of note, the police department estimates it would need to spend an additional $419,000 annually to maintain data storage for on-body cameras after the two-year trial ends in 2017.
Sacramento’s $600,000 federal grant was announced Sept. 21 as part of $23.2 million awarded to 73 local and tribal agencies in 32 states.
Sacramento PD Lt. Justin Risley wrote in an online post in May: “Initially our plan is to use the cameras for the specialized units that do not have access to the in-car camera systems that our uniformed patrol staff currently have.” The department was in the process of testing five different body-worn camers that were on the market with a small number of K9, bike officers and other specialty units.
Sacramento Police Department had 708 sworn officers at the end of last year, according to its 2014 annual report.
