APD goes HD

Atlanta Police Department vehicles were outfitted with new WatchGuard Video dash-cams last week. The project is the result of a $149,650 proposal that was approved by the city council in June that included 15 in-car cameras, 20 body-worn cameras and related equipment.

The new body cams are part of a fully automated system designed to sync to a patrol car’s dash camera in real-time. When emergency lights are activated by officers, the car and body camera power on. Data uploads automatically to Cloud storage once the officer returns to the police station.

According to Officer Marty Spriggs, the new hardware is a vast improvement over what officers have used in the past.

“The ones we have now fall off easily and the video is really grainy,” Spriggs said. “This new one has high quality video and audio that links back to the dash-cam.”

Another feature the officer appreciates is the one-minute pre-start on the playback. The system records on a constant loop and saves the minute right before the cam is triggered to add to the video.

“Let’s say I see someone run a stop sign, for instance, and I flip on my lights to start the recording,” said Spriggs.

“When I play back the video, it adds the full minute before I triggered it that shows the car actually running the stop sign.”

The $149,650 system has an annual fee of $17,325 after the first year which, according to Spriggs, is a small price for the level of protection it affords the department.

“I do feel a lot safer with this system, no doubt,” Spriggs stated.

WatchGuard Video is a Motorola company and major provider of mobile video solutions for approximately one-third of all law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada and has sold 4200 similar units to the Houston Police Department—their largest customer in Texas. The Department of Public Safety is the company’s second-largest customer in Texas.