SAND SPRINGS, Okla. -- In the midst of so many shootings and other incidents involving police officers, we went to work to find out how local law enforcement uses body cameras to keeps communities safe.
Many departments in our area already rely on them every day.
Sand Springs police is one of those departments that says body cameras are true backup for their officers.
They say they give the most accurate account of what happens during dangerous calls.
“Our job is all about details,” said Sand Springs Officer Daniel Twist.
A body cam is just one of the several pieces of equipment that officer twist wears every day. But if you ask him, it may be the most important.
“I like to interact with people,” he said. “It holds any officer that's wearing the body camera to a standard that's going to be acceptable among the public.”
The cameras showed their true worth for the department last April during an officer-involved shooting.
“It's a tragedy anytime a life is taken. The good side of it is what the public was able to see...it goes back to accountability,” said Deputy Chief John Mars.
Sand Springs pays $20,000 a year for tamper-proof footage to be downloaded and sent straight to the department's video storage server with a third party.
It's what Tulsa is working on now with a $600,000 grant from the justice department.
“Video, car camera, it's a lot of data that needs to be stored,” said Tulsa Police Spokesperson Officer Leland Ashley. “It's a lot of data to be downloaded, so we're just looking at ways we can incorporate both of those so we can get the best money for our buck.”
Tulsa Police hopes to have the cameras in place later this year in order to view crime from a different perspective, just like their sand springs counterparts.
“We don't have anything to hide and we're here for one common goal and that's to protect the community,” said Twist.
Cameras are also worn in Owasso and McAlester.
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