The Wichita Police Department is testing a new type of high-tech body camera that it says will reduce the risk of human error.
All officers were outfitted last year with body-worn cameras, but police Chief Gordon Ramsay says technology has already advanced. The department is trying out 12 new body cameras that are blue-tooth capable and can turn on automatically.
“We’ve seen across the country where officers forget to turn the cameras on, and valuable footage is not captured," Ramsay said at an event earlier this week.
The cameras will turn on when a Taser is removed from a holster, when the lights are turned on in the squad car, or when an officer removes the the shotgun from the squad car. When a camera turns on, it will have a previous recording time of up to 2 minutes.
WPD’s body-worn camera program started in 2015, and last year received a matching federal grant worth $250,000.
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