The city council unanimously decided on Monday to pay $40,000 to equip police motorcycles with digital video cameras.
The city council unanimously decided on Monday to pay $40,000 to equip police motorcycles with digital video cameras.
That’s $5,700 per motorcycle for each of the police department’s seven motorcycles.
Evanston police use the cameras to record traffic stops.
“Frankly, it negates a lot of citizen complaints about the conduct, the officers and traffic stops,” Chief Richard Eddington said.
The cameras are in constant operation and delete footage older than fifteen minutes, Eddington said. When police activate their lights, the cameras save some of the footage, allowing police to access recordings of both the traffic violation as well as the subsequent traffic stop.
The department has 31 squad cars that are already outfitted with the cameras.
Those cameras in addition to the news ones will cost the city about $8,000 annually to maintain. The council approved that amount for this year’s maintenance.