Myrtle Beach-area police departments interested in equipping officers with body camera technology

At least three area police departments have been equipping officers with body cameras for the last year and more such cameras could be on the way for every Grand Strand officer if some South Carolina lawmakers have their way.

But how the cameras and their storage systems will be funded are the biggest questions officials have about the systems.

State senators Gerald Malloy and Marlon Kimpson pre-filed legislation on Wednesday that would require all law enforcement officers in the state to wear body cameras while they are on duty, though it didn’t have details on how to pay for them. House members are expected to file similar legislation later this month.

“History has demonstrated that eyewitnesses are not always the most reliable form of evidence,” Malloy said in a release. “It is time for South Carolina to invest in common sense technology. This investment is critical to preserving the integrity of our system of justice.”

But Myrtle Beach police officials have already been using 30 body cameras and have ordered another 175 for every officer in the department, Capt. David Knipes said. The cost is about $200,000 for the new cameras and was funded by a budget increase approved earlier this year.

The cameras will be used as an extension of the in-car video camera system, Knipes said. Currently, bicycle, foot and beach patrol officers use the body cameras because they do not have traditional in-car cameras.

“These are used to give these officers added protection. We’ve found they’ve been great help in cases,” Knipes said. “We have videos to go back to and get a true and accurate version of what happened.”

The cameras are about the size of a credit card and are clipped to the chest area of the officer. The video is downloaded to a secure server at the end of each shift, similar to the in-car camera systems, Knipes said.

Myrtle Beach officers wear a VieVU camera, which says on its website that more than 4,000 police agencies in the world uses the waterproof camera that records up to 12 hours of video on an internal memory.

“This is the route we are going now and you will see more and more departments getting them,” Knipes said and compared body cameras to the in-car cameras that are now standard issue with each patrol vehicle. “It’s getting everything the officer is seeing.”

Officers in North Myrtle Beach and Conway also already use body cameras, but not as widespread as Myrtle Beach officers will in the future.

“We’ve been testing out body cameras for about a year,” Conway police Lt. Selena Small. “We love the idea, but we’re looking into which one will be more efficient and we’re still trying to explore avenues on ways to fund it.”

The issue with each officer wearing a body camera is the storage of the videos, Small said.

“You have to have a large server to hold everything. That’s the problem you get into with those cameras, you get into storage issues,” Small said. “The storage costs are there. We’re looking for funding for it.”

Earlier this year, Conway police used a grant to switch their in-car camera recordings from VHS to digital systems, which improved the quality, Small said.

In North Myrtle Beach, there are 11 body cameras used by officers on the city’s alcohol enforcement team, bicycle team and jailers, said Pat Dowling, city spokesman.

“The city would like to expand the use of body cameras by its police officers and is actively exploring different types of body cameras with the goal of finding one that will sync with its existing dashcam system and associated video storage system,” Dowling said. “Finding a compatible model would certainly reduce the expense of adding body cameras by streamlining the uploading and storage of resulting video, and making it easy for use to access the resulting information for court, information requests and other uses.”

Horry County police Lt. Raul Denis said Chief Saundra Rhodes supports the use of body cameras, but the lack of funding has prevented the department from investing the technology.

Currently, Horry County officers have cameras in all their patrol cars, but none outside of the vehicles. Officials with the county’s information technology department are looking at systems and storage for the cameras and the policies for managing it and handling the videos.

“We’ve had our IT department look into the cameras and gather information about the cameras,” Denis said. “Right now we’re in the discussion stage.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2014 at 6:31 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach-area police departments interested in equipping officers with body camera technology."