All Watsonville Patrol Officers Now Wearing Body Cameras

WATSONVILLE, CA — The Watsonville Police Department has officially rolled out its body-worn camera program with about 95 percent of uniformed personnel trained. Additionally, all officers on patrol are now equipped with Axon body-worn cameras, the department announced Friday.

The body-worn camera project has been in the works for about two years, the department said, noting that $451,152.18 from Measure G and $20,575 from a federal grant were used to purchase the 75 cameras, equipment and software needed to run the program.

“If an officer comes to see you for a call for service or you see an officer out in the community, you’re probably going to notice that they’re wearing a body camera on their uniform,” WPD Captain David Rodriguez said.

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“It’s a very good evidentiary tool. A lot of times we focus on the accountability and the transparency part of it, but it also gathers very valuable evidence for our officers,” Rodriguez continued. “So hopefully that leads to a better prosecution in the end.”

Below, Rodriguez gives responses to a few commonly asked questions about body-worn cameras:

-Can officers delete video footage?
The answer to that is no. Officers do not have the authority or even the ability in the program to delete any footage. Just like they can’t delete it, they can’t edit it as well. We have about three of us at the police department who have administrative rights to redact video. What that means is we’re not changing the video, we’re not taking portions out of it; what we’re doing is maybe blurring a face, blurring license plates, blurring information that should not be put out in the public.

-When are the body-cams recording?
The cameras are on at all times in the field. However, they’re not recording the entire time. An officer will start recording once they get to the scene of a call for service, take some kind of enforcement action; they’ll start activating the recording and then once the incident is over they will stop recording.

-Do the body-cameras increase accountability?
I think it’s both holding our officers and community members accountable. What the video is going to likely show is that our officers and community members are treating each other with respect.