Wheaton police to patrol streets with new squad car cameras

Wheaton police officers are getting new cameras in their squad cars.

The city council has authorized the purchase of in-car camera systems from Axon Enterprise, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based maker of the Taser.

The squad car cameras document police encounters, collect evidence and supplement body cameras worn by police. Sworn officers began using Axon body cameras last spring, about two years ahead of a state-mandated deadline.

Currently, squad cars are equipped with camera systems made by Motorola. Those devices are almost four years old and reaching the end of their useful life, police and city officials say.

The department's new squad car cameras will wirelessly pair with the officer-worn cameras already supplied by Axon.

"Soon, we're going to have all of our cameras talking to one another, utilizing the same network," City Manager Mike Dzugan said.

Under a five-year contract, the city will pay Axon $43,224 per year for the purchase of the new cameras, related software and cloud storage services. The total cost of the agreement will not exceed $216,121.

The city budgeted cannabis use tax revenues, which are distributed to all Illinois local governments based on population, to replace the existing in-car cameras.

"We are still eligible for an annual grant reimbursement over the course of those five years," Wheaton Sgt. Daniel Salzmann recently told the council.

As part of sweeping criminal justice reforms in Illinois, all police officers statewide must wear body cameras by 2025. The deadlines for individual departments vary based on population size.

A police force of Wheaton's size - serving more than 50,000 people - must have body cameras by 2024. But the city opted to deploy the cameras well before that deadline.