Burbank police officers now equipped with body cameras
Burbank residents may have noticed a recent update to the police department’s uniform — body-worn cameras.
Since the new year, uniformed officers with the Burbank Police Department have been equipped with chest-mounted cameras while patrolling the city’s streets.
The adoption comes five years after the department first considered implementing the devices in a proposal that was rejected by the City Council at the time.
In an update on the devices presented to the Burbank Police Commission on Wednesday, Lt. Mark Stohl said roughly 120 officers have been outfitted with them — out of the 140 cameras they had available.
According to Stohl, the feedback has been generally positive, and the technology contained in the cameras allows for the department to keep track of officers’ whereabouts at any given time.
“[The cameras are] LTE enabled. It has the capability to show on a map in real-time where the officers are and if [the devices] are recording,” he said. “And, if we need to, we can live-stream into the camera because it’s cellular-enabled.”
Last July, the Burbank City Council unanimously approved a five-year contract with Taser-manufacturer Axon to provide the cameras, with the city projected to pay about $2.2 million over its duration.
About $837,900 of the city’s budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year was earmarked for the cameras.
The approval came after the department spent a year field-testing devices from different manufacturers.
Councilman Bob Frutos, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer, said prior to the vote the cameras would help protect officers from frivolous complaints and unnecessary investigations.
Despite the council’s approval, the cameras did have some opposition.
Lt. J.J. Puglisi, president of the Burbank Police Officers’ Assn., said at the time the money could be better spent on hiring more department personnel.
The department is allowed a maximum of 160 sworn police officers by the city, and Stohl said during the commission meeting that staffing levels prevented the deployment of all the cameras.
In addition to the body-mounted devices, the company provided the department with 32 car cameras that were installed in the agency’s fleet.
Stohl told the police commission that the two devices work in concert with one another. Once an officer activates their sirens, both cameras begin to record.
Each camera has a buffer that will document the 30 seconds prior to activation.
“If you saw something and turn the camera on, you basically go back in time and capture it,” he said.
Videos recorded by the devices are then stored on a cloud-based platform managed by Axon that can be accessed by the department and by prosecutors with the city and district attorney’s offices.
The department also received 140 new Taser stun guns from Axon that will activate a body camera if any officer discharges the electrical weapon.
Despite the new technology, recording police contacts while in the field is not new for Burbank. Since 2012, the department has used digital-audio recording devices from a manufacturer called Puma, which caters specifically to law-enforcement agencies.
Unlike body and car cameras, the audio files are physically stored on servers at the department’s headquarters.
“The problem with Puma was when we maxed out [our storage space,] we had to buy more memory and maintain the server,” Stohl said.
Body cameras have increased nationwide in response to officer-involved incidents from shootings to police misconduct.
In Los Angeles, the department is currently using body-camera footage while investigating a group of officers accused of falsifying department reports in an effort to boost stop statistics.
In December, a LAPD officer’s own body camera reportedly recorded him fondling a woman’s corpse.
