Fulton County police officers will get body and dash cameras after the county comission on Wednesday agreed to spend $405,400 to buy the equipment.
The county will purchase about 170 cameras, which commissioners said will help promote accountability as well as enhance transparency and increase public trust.
The cameras “will be a beneficial tool to protect our police force on the front lines and respond to any citizen’s questions about an officer’s actions,” Fulton County chairman John Eaves said in a statement. The cameras are for officers that patrol unincorporated Fulton County.
The Utility Associates cameras have a mounting system that is built into the officers’ uniforms, to decrease the likelihood of them getting dislodged. They upload video wirelessly and immediately. The cameras have the ability to protect the identity of victims and bystanders.
While they can be activated manually, they also automatically start recording in certain situations, like when an officer is down. The cameras automatically alert 911 dispatchers if that is the case.
The cameras are able to archive video data and are a tool to help officers in their investigations, the county said.
Over the past few years, as recordings of police shootings have gone viral, departments have been been buying cameras to protect the public and themselves.
The city of Atlanta agreed last month to spend $5.6 million to equip its police department with 1,200 body cameras from TASER International. That department has had a pilot program in which some officers were wearing cameras.
Cobb County also voted last month to buy 100 more body cameras to meet the Cobb Police Department’s goal of outfitting all 500 uniformed officers with the cameras. And DeKalb County agreed over the summer to buy 600 cameras.
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