Fort Wayne City Council approves body cameras

Fort Wayne City Council voted 8 to 1 for body cameras for police

Tonight city council voted on a body camera ordinance that would have four hundred officers wearing them by 20-23 with compliance from the fort wayne police department.fox 55's jentill neal tells us more about what it would look like when the body cameras are implemented.

Jentill?hunter the vote is 8 to 1 for body cameras tonight.

Uniformed officers would be required to wear these body cameras as part of their standard uniform.

First they had to work out some details.

The fort wayne city council agreed they are looking to have the cameras function much like the dash cams which turn on as soon as they activate their squad car lights.

Penalities for failure to do so is explained in the current police policy.

Camera footage will not be reviewed by a commission.>00:42:35-00:42:51 "my digital evidence unit will take care of all the footage.

The law has where you have to obsucure certain things before it can be sent out to a victim, to a defendent or their attorney."council decided to leave all policies to the police department.

I asked councilwoman sharon tucker why.> 00:40:10-00:40:31 "the policy has always been in control of the police chief.

He's very capable.

I love our chief.

He's able to be able to make those decisions.

In the ordinance we're leaving that decision making for policy to be on the chief.

What we would like is for the chief to bring that policy back to us before the end of the year for a look over."councilman jason arp voted no on the ordinance tonight saying the police department has already been working on this.

00:38:04-00:38:17 "i don't think that the resolution passed today was necessary.

I think it was more of a political show to appease a certain segment of the folks that have been protesting."

Arp says doing things openly like this opens the door for all kinds of foyer request.

He says if they just focused on policy, that was already being worked on, he doesn't think that there would be as many future problems as they could have now.reporting live jentill neal... fox 55 news.

3