The Bloomington Police Department will upgrade officers’ body cameras in 2020 to increase accountability when officers draw their weapons.
Bloomington Police Chief Mike Diekhoff spoke about the technology upgrades at the Fourth Annual Public Safety Report.
“There will be sensors in the officer’s holsters so that any time they draw their firearm, it would automatically turn the camera on,” Diekhoff says.
Diekhoff says BPD currently gathers about 50 gigabytes of video data every 24 hours.
An Indiana law passed in 2016 says that if a local police department collects video footage, they have to store it for 190 days, or long enough for a citizen to request access to footage that concerns them.
Footage that concerns someone can be defined as a person depicted in the recording, or if the person depicted is deceased or incapacitated, their relatives and representatives. An owner or occupant of property depicted in a recording can also request access to recordings. And a crime victim, if the depicted events are relevant to the recording, are also allowed to request access to video data.
Police in Indiana are not required by law to have body cameras.
