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MPD to implement body camera program

Sgt. Joy Medeiros, shown in this photo taken in April 2015, shows an Axon Enterprise Inc. body-worn camera that Maui police officers could be using as soon as September. Medeiros, who has coordinated the body-worn camera program, currently is organizing the training for use of the camera. -- The Maui News / CHRIS SUGIDONO photo

KAHULUI — Maui Police Department patrol officers will undergo training to use body-worn cameras next month, as the department moves closer to implementing the program to record some police interactions with the public.

“If everything goes as planned, we plan to have the cameras on the road operational by Sept. 1,” Deputy Chief Dean Rickard said at a Maui Police Commission meeting Wednesday at the University of Hawaii Maui College.

He said police just received 125 body-worn cameras, after executing a contract last month to buy the cameras from Axon Enterprise Inc., formerly called Taser International.

According to the Maui County website, $180,291 was paid to Axon of Scottsdale, Ariz., for the body-worn camera system in June.

As part of the contract, Axon employees will be on Maui to train officers to use the cameras Aug. 20 to 31, Rickard said.

Maui police have received 125 body-worn cameras in a $180,000 contract with Axon Enterprise Inc., formerly called Taser International. -- The Maui News / CHRIS SUGIDONO photo

Officers in all Maui County patrol districts will be assigned a body-worn camera, Police Chief Tivoli Faaumu said last month.

While patrol supervisors won’t have body-worn cameras for now, they are being encouraged to attend the training to familiarize themselves with the cameras, Rickard said.

He said Sgt. Joy Medeiros, who has coordinated the body-worn camera program, is coordinating the training as well. Police also formed a committee to investigate implementing a body-worn camera system two-and-a-half to three years ago, Rickard said.

He said work is being done to prepare district police stations to accommodate the camera docks to upload data from the cameras into a storage system at evidence.com.

The data storage is part of the contract with Axon, Faaumu said.

Other police departments, including the Kauai Police Department, have used that storage system, Faaumu said.

“We believe that will be the best way to store it instead of us creating our own storage due to the volume of the data that will be collected and the volume to be stored,” he said.

The Axon camera, which is clipped to the front of a police uniform, was the first type of body-worn camera to be tested by some Maui patrol officers during a monthlong trial beginning in April 2015. Officers later tested two other brands of body-worn cameras.

After field testing of the cameras, 90 percent of officers supported its use, Faaumu said.

He said that percentage was even higher than the 79 percent of the public who supported body-worn cameras in a survey.

Faaumu said officers are supporting use of the cameras amid challenges in the law enforcement profession over the past couple of years.

“Some of the officers even tried to video their action on the street,” Faaumu told police commissioners last month. “With that, the department decided we needed to take action.”

He said the cameras will be positioned at officers’ midsections. The camera may not record everything an officer sees, Faaumu cautioned. He said that if an officer turns his or her head, the camera will still face in the same direction as the officer’s body.

Eventually, with additional funding, the department also wants to have cameras installed in the dashboards of all police cars, instead of just having Traffic Section vehicles equipped with cameras, Faaumu said.

“That’s the ultimate goal, to have the two cameras working side by side,” he said.

He said officers also will be trained in procedures covering when to turn on body-worn cameras and when to turn them off, taking into consideration privacy and other issues.

When the camera is turned on, the 20 seconds of video — but not audio — preceding the activation will be included in the recording.

Faaumu said police are looking into creating a special section to review and download data as part of auditing the system, to make sure the system is working properly.

“If there is anything we can recover for training purposes, we will pull it out,” he said. “But it’s not for the purpose of (looking for) wrongdoing.”

He said police are seeking an additional position for someone to review the data from body-worn cameras.

Detective Barry Aoki, Maui chapter chairman of the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, said the union has been working closely with the department to develop a policy for use of the body-worn cameras.

“We support the use of the camera,” Aoki said.

He said that while some have focused on how cameras affect police officers’ actions, “with a camera, everybody will behave better.”

“A lot of decline in use of force is not just because the officers are behaving better,” Aoki said. “It’s because the offenders know they are being recorded.”

He said SHOPO believes use of the cameras should be negotiated as part of the police contract “because it changes conditions of work.”

The camera isn’t just another piece of equipment, Aoki said.

“It records and keeps a permanent record of everybody the camera comes in contact with,” he said. “The camera doesn’t differentiate between public space and private space.”

While the recordings may not capture an entire event, Aoki said: “Hopefully, the videos can give the community a much bigger picture of what officers go through in the line of work.”

* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.

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