Police Body Camera Business All About the Video Evidence Storage

Lucas123 writes: Body cameras are the fastest growing segment of the police video camera business. The two largest police body camera manufacturers today — Taser and VieVu — say they've shipped devices to 41% of the nation's 18,000 police departments. But, the hardware is only the basis for the real business: video evidence storage. Last year, Taser's gross profit margins on hardware were 15.6%; the gross margins for video storage were 51%, according to Glenn Mattson, who follows Taser as an equity analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann. "There's no contest. They don't care about making money on the cameras," Mattson said. As of the first quarter of this year, more than a petabyte of police video has been uploaded to Taser's Evidence.com service. Just one of VieVu's clients, the Oakland PD, has uploaded more than a million police videos. The cost of storage, however, is so high that police departments have been forced to determine strict retention policies, that in some cases may effect the long-term handling of evidence. In Birmingham, Ala., for example, where they've deployed 300 cameras and hope to double that this year, the the video cameras themselves cost about $180,000, but the department's total outlay for a five-year contract including cloud storage with Taser will be $889,000.

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The real cost

[ThatsNotPudding]

The real reason of this costly storage is that incriminating evidence of an LEO executing someone can be completely deleted at a moments notice, with the traces left behind as that of a cosmic ray / solar flare incident.

That there is zero talk of all the data being recorded to and held only by the DOJ is related to the same reason that there is _still_ no centralized, national database of LEOs shooting and killing people. It speaks volumes about the real agenda of state / local LEO w.r.t. all the minority communities nationwide. The Klan didn't so much disappear as having merely traded their white robes for blue and brown uniforms (and the license to murder with impunity).