Boonville Police Department set to get body cameras

The Boonville Police Department will give twenty of its officers, including all seventeen patrol officers, body cameras.

Chief Bobby Welliver said he finished writing a grant for the body cameras in late July. The Local Law Enforcement Block Grant, given out through the Missouri Department of Public Safety, will pay for either half or all of the cost of the cameras, depending on which brand the department chooses.

Welliver told Boonville’s Police Board Monday night an officer is testing three different brands of body cameras, which range from $350 to $800 per camera.

Welliver said the department may not get the full $10,000 grant from the state, but it would purchase the cameras no matter what amount it received.

“We are going to implement the cameras, in one way or another,” Welliver said. “If we have to pay for it out of city funds, we’ll do that.”

Welliver said the footage from the body cameras will be handled the same way the footage from the patrol car’s dashboard camera is handled. The footage will be kept on the department’s computer server to avoid paying additional costs of software maintenance.

Welliver said the body cameras, like the dashboard cameras, are a tremendous help to the police force and the community. With them, neither the officer nor the public can make false claims about what happened during an interaction with police.

“I think, in a majority of the situations, it’s going to help our officers,” Welliver said. “It’ll be a real-time record of what happened. So there won’t be any way to manipulate it.”

The Boonville City Council would need to approve any purchase the police department makes. Ned Beach, a Ward 3 councilman and representative on the Police Board, said he liked the idea of body cameras.

“You have a video and an audio record of, if I’m an officer, what I did and what I said,” Beach said. “Same with the person charged.”

The Columbia Police Department purchased 102 body cameras for each of its officers in July. Columbia Police Chief Ken Burton told the Columbia City Council in September the body cameras reduced the amount of complaints against police officers for excessive force, since both parties are recorded during an interaction.

“It’s probably the best decision we’ve made since I’ve been here,” Burton said in September.

Welliver said the cameras will also keep people from physically fighting police officers, as well.

“I believe it’s my job to stand up for [the Boonville police officers] and protect them, and give them the equipment we can to make them safe,” Welliver said.

The Department of Public Safety will review grant applications later this month. Welliver said the Boonville Police Department, once it purchases the body cameras, will need time developing rules for using them and storing the footage, and said officers may begin using them near the start of 2015.