The entire Sandy Springs police force including captains, the deputy chief and chief will soon be equipped with body cameras.
Higher ranking personnel who seldom go on patrol don’t usually wear body cameras, Deputy Chief Keith Zgonc said during a City Council meeting Tuesday. But nationwide calls for increased transparency after a summer of social unrest over police violence moved the department to ask for 40 new body cameras, he said. All sworn officers will be outfitted with them.
Council members approved spending $2.2 million over a five-year period for the new body cameras and improved tasers from Axon Enterprises Inc.
Sandy Springs has 170 sworn officers and first bought 92 body cameras from Axon in 2017. More were purchased over the following two years and currently 130 patrol and traffic officers as well as road sergeants wear them, Zgonc said.
Officers will also be equipped with the Taser 7, a more accurate and effective device than what’s used on patrol now, a city statement said.
Zgonc told the City Council that officers draw their tasers about once or twice a month.
“Sometimes they’re drawn but not activated,” he said, adding that as a safeguard, body cameras are turned on when an officer activates the taser.
Officers also are required to turn on the patrol car’s dash camera when they leave the vehicleor when a vehicle’s blue lights are turned on, he said.
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