In an attempt to win back public trust, the Seattle Police Department is considering using body-mounted video cameras to record contacts with residents. There are many benefits, both for cops and civilians, to recording all encounters between the two. But several issues still remain in making the technology practical, as the San Jose Police Department recently found out.”Really, it came down to cost,” SJPD Sgt. Jason Dwyer tells Seattle Weekly. “It has less to do with how police and the community feels about the program. The reality is we have to pay for it.”San Jose ran a six-month pilot program using Taser brand video cameras, which are mounted on officers’ heads via an ear clip. The cameras were apparently uncomfortable to officers, especially those who wear glasses.San Jose police tried head-mounted “Robocopish” cameras.But the real drawback was the cost–particularly the cost of storing the hours and hours of video data retrieved from the devices each day.”We have 1,100 officers in San Jose,” Dwyer says. “If 500 officers had these, we would have a huge cost in storing all that data.”In Seattle, city leaders are looking at a different company and a different type of camera. VieVu cameras are worn on the officer’s lapel, thus eliminating the problem of wearing bulky equipment on one’s face, but at the same time sacrificing some of the detail that comes with recording whatever an officer turns his or her head toward.Under Seattle’s proposed plan, data storage would not handled by VieVu, but would come in the form of a massive server to be installed and maintained, likely on police property.According to cost projections calculated by the city of Seattle, data storage for the camera pilot program would cost $42,000, the most expensive line item in the program’s $243,000 budget. Obviously those costs would increase significantly if the pilot program expands to full department-wide implementation. There is also the issue of what to do with the video data once it’s stored. VieVu spokesperson Heidi Traverso tells Seattle Weekly that her company makes it possible to code and sort different videos in order to make it easier to retrieve specific video when needed. But Dwyer tells us that Taser offered similar coding and sorting capabilities, and in the end, the massive amount of data being entered every day turned into essentially a giant mess.”We had a huge amount of data,” Dwyer says. “And sorting through it was difficult.”Traverso says the key to finding the right video camera for the right department is to experiment with several brands–something Seattle could be doing for free.VieVu, like other law-enforcement camera makers, offers free small-scale pilot programs to agencies. But since SPD wants its pilot program to use some 70 cameras, VieVu has to charge (hence the $243,000 price tag).”If Seattle decides that our company is right, great,” she says. “But if not, we’re OK with that too. The key is to try out all the companies and see what fits. And they can do that for free.”As it stands, the Seattle City Council has yet to vote on implementing a body-camera pilot program. At a hearing last week, residents spoke out about the need to use cameras in rebuilding trust between residents and cops. Video recordings could certainly help do that.The warning from San Jose, however, is to find a system that’s actually practical. Because recording hours of police interactions doesn’t help anyone if the data is too hard to sort through and the cost is too great to bear. Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.