Gig Harbor police officers will be among first in Pierce County to get body cams, chief says

Gig Harbor police officers will have body cameras within the next 30 to 45 days, Police Chief Kelly Busey said this week.

If the timeline is met, Gig Harbor will be the first department in Pierce County to deploy body cameras, and only the third in the state. So far, only Seattle and Spokane have them.

After a series of high-profile shooting deaths across the county, calls for police accountability have mounted. But Busey said his department has been working to get body cameras for nearly four years.

“All this was going on before the recent civil unrest,” Busey said. “We are well on track to get it up and running.”

Each officer will be provided a body camera. For almost every call to service, the body camera is required to be on, with a few exceptions, such as child interviews. Then, after the officer’s shift, the video footage will be uploaded into a cloud storage system.

The full policy on how the cameras will be used is not yet finalized, Busey said. Officers will be trained on how to use the body cameras.

“It’s fairly intuitive, but they made it simple,” Busey said. “It will just be ‘Here’s the policy, here’s how the devices work, are there any questions.’ The officers can only view their own videos.”

High costs, hassles

High costs and administrative hassles involving the state public records act have kept most Pierce County departments from embracing the technology up to now.

Busey said 2016 was the turning point for body cameras. Before 2016 police departments in general were fearful to take on the technology, due to the potential for overly broad public disclosure requests.

“If someone wants all of our videos, we would have to redact certain things, like juveniles faces, inside people’s home,” Busey said. “The worst one for us would be ‘I want all your videos where you’re dealing with someone with a red shirt.’ We’d have to watch every video.”

In 2016 legislature opened up a window of opportunity.

“If police departments had an active body camera program there was temporary law that covered them from overly broad requests,” Busey said. “You’d need some sort of nexus to the case — a defense attorney, a victim.”

Soon after, the Gig Harbor Police Department ordered three body cameras for testing. Busey said these were used for some time, but there were technology issues.

“It had to do with uploading of the video,” Busey said. “We asked the company to redesign ways to upload the video; it took them a while to get it done.”

Now the police department has received 12 body cameras made by a company called Getac, and have ordered two more for their 14 staff members. Every patrol car will also have a dash camera attached to the vehicle.

Rugged gear

Getac, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based MiTAC-Synnex, is known primarily as a maker of field-hardened laptops for police and military use.

According to its website, the Getac body-worn camera records panoramic, high-definition video even in low-light conditions, with up to 12 hours of battery life, enough to cover a full shift. Using Bluetooth technology, it can be rigged to turn on automatically when, for instance, lights and siren are activated, or an officer draws his weapon. It can also be activated manually.

The device uses GPS satellite information to tag each recording with an exact location.

Other departments in Pierce County, including Tacoma, Steilacoonm and DuPont are expected to deploy the techology soon.

Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards has vowed to push for body cameras after the death of Manuel Ellis, who died in March while being restrained by police, and protests against police brutality and calls for reform.

“We have waited way, way too long. And we have heard way too many excuses,” Woodards said recently.

Tacoma is in the process of acquiring body cameras, said TPD spokesperson Wendy Haddow. Starting last year, the department began testing equipment in a closed environment and as of March was looking at vendors and costs more closely, she told The News Tribune.

Sheriff holding off

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols unincorporated Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula, is holding off for now.

Sheriff Paul Pastor said the cost of holding, processing, redacting and distributing material requested video material is very high, but he wouldn’t offer an estimate.

“It is very difficult for us to keep up with requests for printed material, much less video recordings,” Pastor said.

He added that the personal privacy of those filmed is a concern.

“I believe that there is real potential for victims and witnesses to be identified for purposes of intimidation by perpetrators and real potential for people we come into contact with to be ridiculed,” Pastor said in an email.

For a large department like the sheriff’s office, the cost can be very high.

The Seattle Police Department has spent $2.26 million on its body-camera program since its creation in 2018.

Annual costs include $1.1 million for hardware, software and storage, and $730,000 for six positions: three to review video and three for IT support and data analysis, said Nick Zajchowski, who oversees the program.

Philip Stinson, a professor on police behavior at Bowling Green State University, said police departments across the country are struggling to make ends meet, even without the added cost of body-camera programs.

“A lot of police chiefs view this as luxury: good to have but perhaps can’t afford it,” Stinson said. “I’m not suggesting it’s not worth the cost, but when we are making calls to defund the police, we have to look closely at the cost involved.”

Dash cams, too

In addition to body cameras, Gig Harbor police will have in-vehicle dash cameras, joining two other departments, Lakewood and Pacific, that already use them.

Lakewood Police Chief Mike Zaro said cameras in patrol cars offer a broad perspective that shows a scene but isn’t without flaws.

“Video never captures what a person thinks or feels, only what is said and physical movements,” Zaro said. “And no single camera angle or view can capture everything that’s done, leaving blind spots that are open to interpretation.”

The sheriff’s department, Puyallup and Orting once had in-car cameras but dropped them because officials said complying with public record requests became too costly and time-consuming.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department has repeatedly asked for more officers, so asking for funds for workers to watch and redact body camera footage is a low priority, said sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer. He said initial estimates indicate the department would need eight to 10 people to maintain the program and upwards of $1 million dollars a year to implement body-worn cameras.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department consists of about 300 commissioned officers.

The sheriff’s department needs 28 additional patrol officers, and Troyer said the department wouldn’t want to cut deputies for a body camera program.

“If the county wants to fund it and do a study, you’re not going to have opposition from us,” he said. “We like cameras. The majority of the time cameras exonerate the police.”

Josephine Peterson and Allison Needles of The News Tribune contributed to this story

For more information on Getac body cameras, visit https://www.getacvideo.com/product/police-body-camera/.

To look at the law governing public records and video, visit https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.56.240.

This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 8:47 AM.