Body Cameras and the International Association of Chiefs of Police

Body Cameras for All Police Officers

Laquan MacDonald was killed by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.  The key piece of evidence was a video showing MacDonald posed no threat to the officers and was walking away from the officer who killed Mr. MacDonald at the time of the shooting. 

Chicago Tribune has story of the conviction

CNN Story on other non convictions

After the verdict, we wondered why there was no universal call for all Police Departments to use cameras in their daily policing routines. What might stop the implementation.  It's certainly not the cost.

Axon Body 3

We looked closely at the Axon (Taser Int'l.) Body 3 camera which features high resolution, low-light camera with 4 microphones and a real-time data link.  They also have software, evidence.com, that records the videos and provides cataloging and redacting services. It is expect to list at $700 dollars.

International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)

We also wanted to look in on the convention.  The conference website is here.

If you want to talk about someone who has close to unlimited spending authority, its the chief of a police department.  The money is flowing in from all sources.  Grants, programs, local budgets and confiscation all support spending on the latest equipment by police departments. The vendors came from all different areas.

There would big vendors like Accenture, Harris Corp, Hitachi, IBM, Panasonic and Uber.  And small vendors like Gunbusters, a gun and evidence pulverizing company.

Lots of clothing and equipment vendors for bullet proof vests, rain and safety gear, shoes and accessories.  A niche where a Chief would have purchasing influence was represented.

There were a good number of training vendors focusing on implicit bias such as the Institute of HeartMath.  Police skills "degrade" over time so they purchase a lot of training.  But most of the training was for basic police skills.

Here are some interesting statistics about the number of vendors by category

Aircraft                                                               4 Vendors
Equipment                                                        84
Communication Equipment                             39
Education and Training                                    85
Investigation/Surveillance/Detection               77
Less-than Lethal Weapons                               17
Mobile Technology                                          89
Professional/Consulting Services                    49
Software                                                         112
Robots and Unmanned Vehicles                      12

It is nice to see a large number of education and training vendors.  Police departments have big budgets for training. However, only a few of the education vendors focus on better community relations.

Seventeen of the vendors offered less-than-lethal weapons.

We are a little scared by the number of software vendors and consultants at the show.

And finally there were a couple of Chinese equipment manufactures.

JIANGSU ANKEY ADVANCED MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY CO.,LTD
Wenzhou Hongda Police Equipment Co., Ltd. 
Shenzhen DCW Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.
Guangzhou Yakeda Outdoor travel products