(KWWL) – After years of testing different vendors and products, Iowa DNR conservation officers and park rangers will be equipped with a cellphone body camera.
Iowa DNR says the most driving factor in the choice to use the technology is accountability amongst officers and citizens within the state of Iowa.
“We’re all working on the same team to do our best at that,” Conservation Officer Dakota Drish said.
Drish says his colleagues and department went under “many tests” to ultimately decide the technology they settled on.
“There were many factors in the test process that lead to us going with a cellphone body camera variant,” Drish said.
Many of those factors focused on if a standard issue body camera that’s used by sheriff and police departments would suffice the need to an everyday environment of a conservation officer.
“Our officers don’t work out of a standard office like a police department or sheriff’s office. Our officers are all working independently on their own, out of their own offices, so we needed something very simple to use,” Drish said.
The technology provided by Visual Labs allows the cell phone to turn into a body camera.
Drish says the accountability being held amongst the public and officers is a priority.
“The Iowa DNR is doing everything it can to maintain that level of transparency and accountability that the public expects from us,” Drish says.
The department decided to go with Visual Labs with the uploading feature that’s capable through their technology.
All video captured through an officer’s smartphone body camera is immediately uploaded to a cloud system that can be accessed by all officers or members of Iowa DNR. The uploading feature requires internet access, and in some instances conservation officers and park rangers work within remote areas.
Visual Labs allows the automatic pausing of uploading until the unit is within internet accessibility, without conflict of video files being deleted.
“We work in such remote environments, but the technology allows it to pause itself without causing conflict and it resumes when you get to a location that has better internet connectivity,” Drish said.
In terms of when officers will be recording, department policy requires all rangers or officers to be rolling their video cameras any time an instance involves communication with a citizen.
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source https://abangtech.com/smartphone-body-cameras-rolled-out-for-iowa-dnr-officers-kwwl-com-kwwl-com/
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