Over a year after we were told that the San Francisco Police department would launch a pilot program in which 50 of their officers would wear body-mounted cameras, it appears that we're no closer to achieving that goal. And in a meeting with the Police Commission Wednesday, officials suggested that the program might have significant challenges to overcome, all related to cost.

When the San Francisco Police Department got a $250,000 grant for a body camera pilot program in 2013, we were told that the 50 cop pilot would begin that December. And no one seemed more thrilled than SFPD Chief Greg Suhr, who told the Chron he was happy that they'd finally have something that would record "what really happened in cases like the beating of D'Prince "DJ" Williams, ostensibly for riding his bike on the sidewalk in the Mission District.

Suhr contends that if a camera - and not one from the cell phone of a bystander - had been present at Valencia Gardens, it would have recorded what really happened: A man riding his bike on a sidewalk started to fight when a plainclothes officer tried to stop him, "the guy biting the officer as soon as he touched him."

(Williams, it should be noted, is now suing the city and the officers involved. All charges against him were dropped by the District Attorney.)

The body camera pilot program is supposed to use the same cameras all BART cops wear, cameras a BART police officer described to the Chron as "wonderful...This is the future in law enforcement, just like when we introduced radios, cars and bulletproof vests."

But unlike radios and bulletproof vests, the costs to keep the camera program might be more than we can bear, Suhr seemed to be suggesting in a Police Commission meeting on Wednesday, the Ex reports.

To be fair, Suhr had predicted in April 2014 that the cameras might cost too much, SF Weekly reported. That when Supervisor John Avalos proposed that all officers, not just the 50 from the pilot program, wear cameras.

"When Avalos floated his proposal in April, Police Chief Greg Suhr pointed out that the devices might be prohibitively expensive," The Weekly wrote.

"The cost of storing camera data and sorting through it, in response to Sunshine Act requests, might exceed the amount saved from reduced lawsuits, Suhr said."

On Wednesday, Commander Robert Moser of SFPD's Investigations Bureau told the Police Commission that despite the $250,000 grant, the total program, "including personnel for data management, among other costs," will cost $449,000. And that's just for 50 cops, who are only recording two hours of footage a day. Here's the breakdown:

  • $679.99: The cost of a single Taser Axom camera
  • 50: the number of cameras SFPD bought
  • $33,999: The total camera costs
  • $1.50: The cost per hour per year to store the video captured by these cameras
  • $100,000: The cost for data storage for the pilot program's first year
  • 2: The number of hours per day each of the 50 officers would record footage

It's unclear why this is coming up now, a year and two months after the pilot was expected to begin. After all, according to a Chron report from November, 2013 (an post-publication edit caused the dateline to be adjusted on SF Gate, a Gate staffer confirmed to SFist today), the pilot officers were supposed to don the cameras "in two weeks." In fact, in an Ex report from August, 2013, Suhr said we'd see the cameras on cops in the "next month to six weeks."

However, according to today's report in the Ex, the pilot is only "set to begin once the department finalizes guidelines for their use."

An SFPD spokesperson couldn't explain the temporal disconnect to SFist at publication time, but one thing remains clear — this is all going to cost a lot more than SFPD initially expected. "Someday, body cameras will be standard equipment for all police officers," Suhr told the Police Commission, according to the Ex.

"But right now, the cost to put them on the 1,600 officers who just got phones, you can see what the cost would be to run them 24 hours a day."