BUFFALO, N.Y. — Police departments across the country are trying to increase transparency by adding body cameras to their crime fighting arsenal. The Buffalo Police Department wrapped up a pilot program for body cameras September 1.

"The pilot started in June. We piloted two different vendors, based on different equipment and storage options, so it took about 45 days to change out the equipment to the new vendor, and the second vendor's pilot was completed on September 1," said Captain Jeff Rinaldo, a BPD spokesperson.

Rinaldo said they chose to pilot Axon and Vievu because they were the only two companies that offered all the services surrounding the cameras, including the uploading software and cloud storage themselves.

Other companies contracted each piece out to different vendors.

During the pilot, the department learned that districts will need more IT infrastructure.

"As we roll this out, we have to conduct a site survey with our internet provider, as well as the city MIS (management information systems) to determine where's the IT at right now, what additional headend equipment in the district is needed to transmit that, and back at headquarters, what additional IT requirements do we need to accept that and then put it up into the secure cloud," Rinaldo said.

Nearly 20 officers on B District's afternoon shift tested the equipment.

"Officers thought it went well. There's a lot of caveats in terms of how the camera mounts to the uniform, different mounting options, how they liked it,” Rinaldo said. “Every officer is a different size, different weight. They carry their equipment differently, so there's a lot of that to work through.”

"I know on Allen Street there was an incident that exonerated the officers, so that was nice to see," said John Evans, president of the Police Benevolent Association. "People are making inflammatory statements without any evidence or anything to back it up and the body cameras are basically demonstrating that."

Rinaldo said the department is planning to move forward with equipping their 550 officers on the streets with cameras in the new year.

He added that the equipment will cost $1 million up front and then between $1 million and 1.5 million annually for the video storage. 

The department has applied for grants to buy the cameras, but no grants are available to fund the storage.

He anticipates this is something that could be rolled out starting in the new year and it would take a year or more to equip all the officers on the street.

While they have not selected a vendor and are still in the RFP process, Axon ended up buying Vievu during the city's pilot program.

The community still has some questions about the pilot and the program's future.

"BPD should let the public know what it learned from the pilot program, such as overall effectiveness of the programs, general feedback from the officers, how long cameras were activated on average on a typical shift, and how camera footage was used in criminal or internal investigation," said Orlando Dickson, a third-year UB law student studying the BPD's body camera policy.

The Common Council president says if BPD is planning to request the funding as part of the capital budget, they'll have to do that before November 1.