(File photo by WJBC’s Howard Packowitz)
By Howard Packowitz
BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington Police Chief Brendan Heffner expects his officers will be wearing body cameras next spring.
Body cams are part of Heffner’s three-year strategic plan he presented to the Bloomington City Council Monday night.
Heffner said the department is working with a new vendor, and also figuring out how to store digital data from the body cams, which he said is more expensive than the camera equipment.
“Hopefully, we will have it so we can deploy it department wide, if the cameras are up to our specs,” said Heffner.
“We realize something is not going to work 100 percent of the time, but it should work most of the time, and work well,” the chief said.
Heffner’s strategic plan also calls for a critical incident review board to examine how the department handles major cases, and conduct citizen summits in city neighborhoods in addition to the chief’s monthly focus meetings.
“It could be a speeding issue, a traffic issue, we’re just going to make ourselves accessible, and have those meetings in addition to the focus meetings because I realize that everyone can’t make the focus meetings all the time. So we’re going to get out more,” Chief Heffner also said.
Howard Packowitz can be reached at howard.packowitz@cumulus.com
