Little Rock Police Department Considering Body-Worn Cameras

Little Rock Police Department is considering purchasing 250 to 450 body-worn cameras for all of its patrol officers.

• By Sydny Shepard
• Apr 05, 2019

The City of Little Rock, Ark. is determined to not only consider body-worn cameras for the police department, but to buy and implement them as soon as possible. 

Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. put out a call this week to companies that can provide cameras for every patrol officer in town. 

"Public safety has been a pillar of the start of my administration," Scott said. "Starting with making certain that our city is accountable, clear and transparent in any and everything that we do."

The request for proposals from the city indicates that it wants a system in which body-worn cameras operate in conjunction with the dash-mounted cameras in patrol cars. The system will also feature the capability to record after the fact, should an officer not be able to manually activate the camera.

The Mayor is looking to buy between 250 to 450 cameras. He said he discussed the plan with each of the final candidates for chief of police and how they would include the new technology within their force.

Police departments in major cities around Little Rock, like Jacksonville, Conway and Benton, have all bought camera systems. Jacksonville and Benton have moved forward with implementing them while Conway PD is still in the process of figuring out policies such as storage and training.

The next LRPD chief of police, Keith Humphrey is looking forward to the purchase of body-worn cameras, as his department in Norman, Okla. deployed them on every officer.

While LRPD has looked into purchasing the camera system before, the major hold up with moving forward was the cost to store the footage captured. Scott said that for something this important, he would have no problem taking money from other programs or other departments.