Two important devils in the details:<p>1) As I understand it, this isn't anything like a charitable act. The cameras are free; they sell the cloud storage and other services. Which is great! A fine strategy. But let's not mistake it for public service.<p>2) (more importantly) the specific features and details of police cameras are probably more important than those of any other piece of police equipment. If individual officers can turn them off at a crucial moment, then all cops will be <i>pressured to do so</i> in order to cover up perjury by the bad cops. This is how bad apples spoil the bunch.<p>If, on the other hand, the cameras cannot be turned off at that crucial moment, and the data cannot be hidden from public view via a simple FOIA/FOIL or similar request, this will hugely <i>empower</i> the good and honest cops who can now say, "Sorry bud, I can't turn my camera off and I can't hide the data. You're going to have to own up to what you did."<p>That small detail can be the difference between a functional, mature civil society and a dystopia.
I was curious what they normally charge for the device/service; according to a price list[0] I found from last year, the body cams are $399, the docking stations are $249, and the Evidence.com license is $948/yr (though I'm not familiar with the industry, so I have no idea if anyone actually pays the list prices).<p>[0] <a href="http://www.nationalipa.org/Contracts/151089/Pricing_2016.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.nationalipa.org/Contracts/151089/Pricing_2016.pdf</a>