Peabody Police Body Camera Program Expected To Launch By Summer

PEABODY, MA — All active members of the Peabody Police Department should be wearing body cameras by this summer after the City Council voted to agree to a five-year contract with camera supplier Axon on Thursday night.

The first year of the $235,000 program will be covered through a grant with police paying for $28,600 in cloud storage space through "seizure" funds for the first year. Chief Thomas Griffin told the Peabody City Council Legal Affairs committee that cameras will be expected to arrive in the city in April and that he hopes the department will roll the program out in the summer after officers are trained on proper use.

He said the city moved to be proactive with the cameras after receiving indications that the state may mandate them in the coming years. He said he believes that the cameras will benefit the officers and be embraced by the vast majority of the department.

"When I first came here (in 2014) I talked with the union about it and I would say it was 20 percent in favor and 80 percent against it," Griffin said told the Committee. "I think now that's flip-flopped. In today's world, everything — including what we're doing right now — is on video.

"When we talked to the other police departments they are telling us that these cameras are actually helping them rather than creating problems. I think that's the mindset. We have a lot of younger officers who are into phones with cameras anyway. I think it's going to help us in the long run."

He said the department will have a "mandatory-wear policy" meaning that all officers on duty with the potential to be in contact with the public will have them on at all times. The cameras will be in a "buffering" mode at most times and can be tapped on by officers during interactions. He said they will also automatically turn on when an officer draws a taser or gun.

Body camera footage will be available to the public through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Griffin said members of the department worked with Boston, Lynn and Salem — cities whose departments were early adopters of body cameras — to help with the Peabody rollout.

"Our position was we should learn what problems they had so we can avoid those when our program goes forward," Griffin said. "We learned a lot from them and we will be ahead of where a lot of other departments are going to be because of that."

Griffin credited Healthy Peabody Collaborative Director Sara Grinnell for writing the grant proposal that covers the $235,000 first-year cost. Under the five-year deal, cameras will be upgraded to the latest technology at 30 months and five years, meaning the contract should cover the necessary capital expenses for the first seven to eight years of the program.

"We wanted to be ahead of the curve on this so if the state comes down with some policy we are already in motion," Griffin said of what will be a 15-month process of developing a body camera policy and negotiating the "mandatory-wear policy" with the police union to when the cameras turn on this summer.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)