Recently the Alaska Black Caucus has filed a phony racist lawsuit against the Municipality of Anchorage which has no merit. Hopefully the judge will say case dismissed. The Anchorage Department is looking at the legal grounds of putting the body cameras on the police officers.
Here is a concept that may work similar to the taxicab cameras that are required on taxicabs throughout the city.
First of all the officer is provided with five disks to put in the camera gets two more in case he is called off shift to perform duty. At the end of the week the officer goes to the station turns the used five disks gets five more.
Once the officer puts the disk in the camera that is punch in. The disk stays in the camera and has the able to record for ten hours or eight hours depending on how low the officer is on the duty. Let's install some artificial technology in the process this is similar to the taxicab camera where the camera do not turn on until the passenger opens the back set door and driver turns on the meter. The camera does not turn on until the officer arrives to the call they are responding to according to Anchorage Police Dispatch then the camera turns off after the call is complete which could be all the way til the suspect goes to the station. Camera does not have to be visible to the suspect nor does the suspect need to have permission. We have already confirmed that employers have the right to record duties of employees during working hours as long as the camera is not located in the restroom, break area or changing areas. The time that the camera would automatically turn on without being on a call if a person where to assault the officer or if the officer is involved in a wreck of their cruiser or is injured while on duty this will protect the officer in case the suspect or person says this happen. Camera will tell the truth what happened in the incident. Once the officer takes the disk out that is punch out for the day. We have a pause system for breaks and lunches. One pause means break and two fast pauses means lunch. Must do two fast pause to get it off lunch. We also have to consider safety because we can not make the body cam the primary focus if officer safety is on the line.
Now we have consider what we can give to the public of the officers body cam disk. The police department will have one year to put the recording of the manual disk to the cloud for archives which will be available for historical records to the paper records, microfiche and microfilm this is necessary to solve cold cases in the future.
Maybe this will help get the body cameras sooner to the Anchorage Police Officers.
