Medina Police Install New Cameras In Patrol Cars
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Medina police have a new crime fighting tool on their dashboards, thanks to a $15,000 grant. According to officers, the new state-of-the-art dash cameras will make it easier for them to do their jobs – saving them time, keeping them safe and using them for evidence. “There’s no more of this cumbersome, antiquated system we had on the dash,” Chief Chad Lowery said. The Medina Police Department is upgrading its six patrol car cameras with new digital ones. Officers said they no longer have to worry about interfering with each others’ microphones. “With the old camera systems, the voice recorders were analog, so if two officers got close to one another and happened to be on the same analog channel, one would record on some body else’s tape. That happened a lot,” Lowery said. Chief Lowery said the old cameras only recorded on tape, and it was very time consuming to record or search for video. The new cameras record onto large memory cards, which officers can plug into a computer, making evidence easy to download and burn onto a DVD. “So that officer or the investigator can pull that up at any time by officer’s name. We don’t have to look for tapes anymore,” Lowery said. “It’s all computerized.” Officers told 7 Eyewitness News the cameras are always rolling. But if they want to record something, all they do is press a red button, or turn their cars’ lights on. “If you were watching a stop sign, and someone ran the stop sign, but you didn’t have your camera on, when you turned your camera on to stop that vehicle, it’s going to go back and get a minute prior, so it would actually show the violation,” Lowery said. He added the cameras also keep officers safer, because they automatically record if an officer gets into a wreck. Lowery said all officers have already been trained with the cameras, but they will get more detailed training February 28. He said they will be selling the old cameras on govdeals.com.
