EAST LIVERPOOL — East Liverpool City Council unanimously approved the purchase of new body worn cameras for the East Liverpool Police Department during Monday’s City Council Meeting.

The police department will purchase 19 new body worn cameras, which is enough to provide each officer and the chief with a new one at a total cost of $60,160.

To go along with the ordinance approving the payment for the body cameras, council members approved an ordinance for Police Chief John Lane to accept a grant award in the amount of $21,034 to go toward the purchase price. The grant was awarded specifically for body worn cameras from the Ohio Department of Public Safety Office of Criminal Justice Services.

The body worn cameras will be purchased through Brite and includes the 19 cameras, camera batteries, camera accessories such as mounts and cables, cloud services for storage of camera footage, video services and redaction services that will be for the redaction of information not permitted to be released as public records.

Lane said the department is in need of these cameras, and it’s important for every other officer to have one. He also noted that with the purchase, the department can release body camera footage if a public records request is made for it, whereas they could not do that in the past because they had no way to redact footage that cannot be released as public records such as the cameras recording an officer transmitting a social security or driver’s license number to dispatch along with other items along that nature.

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