Honolulu police plan to speed up rollout of body cameras

The Honolulu Police Department’s body camera program is going so smoothly that Chief Susan Ballard is aiming for full implementation by the end of the year, eight months earlier than projected.

That’s what Maj. Rade Vanic, head of HPD’s Information Technology Division, told members of the City Council Public Safety, Welfare and Transportation Committee on Thursday.

The city’s body cameras are provided through a contract with Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Axon, formerly TASER, which supplies body cameras for more than 80 percent of the police departments that use the technology, Vanic said.

The first group of officers began using them in August, and there are about 300 cameras being used in District 1 (downtown Honolulu) and District 6 (Waikiki), Vanic said. The second watch of District 7 (East Honolulu) will begin using them next week, he said.

When fully deployed, there will be about 1,200 cameras in the field for patrol officers, solo bike officers, foot patrol officers and others who work frequently with the public, Vanic said after the meeting.

“Because … of the relative success and ease of the rollout process, Chief Ballard has actually asked if we can compress the schedule,” Vanic told the committee. “Initially, we would have all of our eight district patrol officers outfitted with body cameras by August of 2020. But with this compressed schedule … we’re working with Axon … to see if we can actually get all of our officers outfitted by December of this year.”

As of last week the officers produced about 2,700 videos representing 18,000 hours of footage that take up about 620 gigabytes of stored information, he said. About 20 percent of those videos were related to criminal cases, he said.

The cameras are supposed to be turned on anytime an officer goes to a call for serv­ice and kept on for the duration of the call. Exceptions may include interviews with confidential informants, victims of horrific crimes or juveniles, Vanic said.

Since August, HPD has discovered only one camera “out of thousands and thousands of hours that we’ve accumulated” that was inoperable, and that was discovered before the officer went out on patrol, he said.

Videos have been shared “on a regular basis” with the city’s Department of the Prosecuting Attorney as evidence in its cases.

To date, the Professional Standards Office has reported no cases that involved the use of body cams, he said

HPD has processed “probably less than a dozen requests” from the public to obtain the videos, he said.

As with other solicitations for government records, those who want to obtain certain videos submit written requests stating their name and the nature of their requests, Vanic said. There are exceptions to which videos can be released. They include cases still under investigation, he said.

Axon provides free cameras and a free server to use during training, he said.

The city approved $2.5 million to be used this current fiscal year for equipment purchases and data storage.

To view HPD’s body camera policy, visit bit.ly/2MpvSyn.