Eye-popping costs have stalled the Vancouver Police Department’s body-worn camera program, according to internal budget documents obtained by CTV News.
The $17 million price tag for the cameras, the data storage, and recovering the video is so high it has critics wondering if it’s even real.
“It does seem like an awful lot of money. Is there a misplaced decimal?” said the NDP’s Mike Farnworth. “$17 million is the budget of some local police forces. Is this just an excuse not to do it?”
The budget, obtained by a Freedom of Information request, says police estimate they will spend some $2,300 on each of the 660 cameras and accessories that would be worn by officers in the street.
Add in expensive maintenance, data storage, and software and the per-camera price climbs to $26,000 – about the price of a new SUV.
“It’s extremely high. It’s not affordable right now,” VPD spokesman Staff Sgt. Randy Fincham told CTV News. “Until something comes along or someone comes along who is willing to fund the project, we don’t have the means.”
$17 million is about 6 per cent of the department's entire budget. The cameras are estimated to cost $1.5 million, and the data storage is estimated to cost about $12.3 million. The rest is largely staffing costs and a contingency budget.
The estimates don’t include the cost of retrieving the videos for court, getting certain software, or transcribing the video, according to the budget document.
Right now, the force has eight cameras deployed on its public safety unit. Those cameras were in use during the shutdown of a tent city in Oppenheimer Park in 2014.
Footage shows those cameras were GoPros. The most expensive GoPro listed on the company’s website is the Hero 5, which retails for about $540 each.
Body-worn cameras are growing in popularity south of the border, but even there costs aren’t as high. In San Diego, police outfitted their force for $1 million U.S. In Los Angeles, their program cost $1.5 million. In Baltimore, the cost was $2.3 million.
Toronto, which is mulling a body-camera program, is estimating its camera program would cost $85 million over 10 years, with the vast majority going to store the data.
In Calgary, reports say the internal data storage was done for just $1 million, using storage tapes – though the cameras in that system have been so error-prone the force has returned them and is starting again.
B.C.'s police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office, released an annual report last week that said body-worn video would help with 93 per cent of cases.
But in the report, it said some 30 per cent of its cases were police officers in the Emergency Response Team or the K9 units, suggesting that police could avoid some of the widespread costs by expanding their camera programs to just those limited units.
“Of course we want accountability,” said Micheal Vonn of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. “But we want to deploy them effectively, not just deploy them.”
The B.C. Ministry of Public Safety didn’t answer questions about whether it would cover the cost of the program.
Staff Sgt. Fincham says the VPD welcomes accountability and did its best to find a path forward for these cameras.
“We put a high value on public accountability. But we haven’t found something that meets our needs. We’re monitoring what other police departments are doing,” Fincham said.
Read the Vancouver Police Department's full camera deployment budget below.
