In-car cameras approved for Vernon Hills police

Several years after the original models were shelved, in-car cameras will return to Vernon Hills police vehicles.

The village board on Tuesday authorized spending not more than $128,514 for a five-year agreement with Axon Enterprise Inc. to buy and install cameras in nine police squad cars and train officers in their use.

In making the request, Police Chief Patrick Kreis said that with advancements in technology, in-car camera systems have become a reliable and practical way to document encounters with the public.

"This was something we identified in our planning last year," Kreis said. "Recordings provide a very useful corroboration of what occurred."

Benefits include providing a "significant" form of evidence when charging and prosecuting offenders, aiding in the review of complaints and serving as a useful department training tool, he added.

The camera system, called FLEET 2.0, will record video and audio to document the majority of the encounters police have with the public, according to information supplied to the village board.

Each of the nine vehicles would have two cameras. One records images in the front of the car and the other records the back seat area. The cameras can be activated by a switch in the car, body mic worn by officers or automatically when the lights and siren are activated.

Recordings will be automatically uploaded to a secure cloud-based storage system accessible to the police department and the Lake County state's attorney's office. That feature streamlines the process of preparing for court, Kreis said.

"That's a significant upgrade to the old technology," he said.

Vernon Hills police have 14 marked police vehicles, but generally nine are in use at any given time.

"We run these recordings during every event, (but) the actual recording that are logged and maintained is when something unusual happened," he said. "It's really used for the enforcement encounters and the more serious events."

Some time ago, Vernon Hills had cameras in squads, but they were discontinued before Kreis was named chief last year.

"That was different technology at the time. The system was down a lot," he said.

The new in-car camera system is expected to be installed by the end of summer, according to Kreis. The cost will be spread over the five years. A one-time state grant of $21,500 will be used to offset the initial payment of $27,905.