Polo City Council OKs purchase of police body, dashboard cameras

POLO — The Polo Police Department soon will add body cameras to its list of equipment.

On May 6, Polo City Council members voted unanimously to purchase six body cameras and four squad dashboard cameras from Axon Enterprise, of Scottsdale, Arizona, for a total of $74,901 over five years.

The costs will be broken down as follows: $33,822 for the first year; $9,673 the second year; $10,060 the third year; $10,463 the fourth year; and $10,881 the fifth year.

There is a state grant for which the police department plans to apply when the grant application period opens in October. That grant would allow the city to recoup some of the Year 1 cost, Police Chief Matt Coppotelli said.

The city budgeted for the cost of the cameras, City Clerk Sydney Bartelt said.

“The body cams are required per the SAFE-T Act,” said Alderman Keith Chestnut, who heads the Police Committee. “We’re coming up on the deadline. There’s no getting around it. It’s something we’ve got to do.”

In January 2021, the state Legislature passed House Bill 3653, also known as the SAFE-T Act. Gov. JB Pritzker signed it into law on Feb. 22, 2021. It requires, among other things, all law enforcement officers be equipped with by body cameras by 2025.

The deadline to implement a body camera program depends on the size of the municipality or county served – the greater the population, the earlier the deadline.

According to the 2020 census, Ogle County’s population is 51,788, which put the Ogle County Sheriff’s Office’s deadline at Jan. 1, 2024. All other Ogle County law enforcement agencies have a Jan. 1, 2025, deadline.

Axon’s bid includes in-person training, removal of existing equipment and installation of the new cameras, Coppotelli said. Additionally, the body cameras automatically will be upgraded at the end of the second year of the contract, and the squad cameras will be upgraded at the end of the fifth year, he said.

“Axon will actually come out to our site and they’ll explain all the storage, how everything works and to upload to the Cloud and all that,” Coppotelli said. “The initial training, they will break down everything that needs to be done during the process after implementation, because these are a brand new product. … Everything will be explained by them, so that’s very important when we’re starting out.”

The Polo Police Department has four full-time officers, Coppotelli said.