The Greensboro Police Department will begin wearing small $1,100 video cameras next month in an effort to improve public trust, give officers peace of mind and capture evidence. The 125 new cameras were paid for with federal stimulus money.
Each camera is about three inches long and as thick as a pen. They are built to replicate the human eye and should record events the same way an officer would see them.
Every 30 seconds the camera erases the footage, unless an officer hits record. Officer Ryan Todd says getting patrol officers in the habit of hitting record will take some time.
“The camera also does a great job of collecting evidence,” Todd said. “Say for example you're chasing a bad guy in a car chase and he's throwing things out the car, drugs or guns, you can go back and review the evidence. I can do it on scene, right after you're safe enough to do that.”
Todd believes that Greensboro is the first department in the state to use the cameras on a large scale.
