Tucson Police hopes to have all their uniformed officers outfitted with body cameras by the end of the calendar year.
TPD received several body cameras back in 2015 and Lieutenant Tim Gilder says the department currently has 125 body cameras and a little over 400 uniformed officers.
He says Prop 101 funding that passed last month will allow the department to get another 300 cameras.
Gilder says the biggest obstacle is coming up with the money to store all the video.
"One of the biggest hurdles for us is the storage and the redaction considerations when people come in to make public records request for the footage," he explained. "We have to have staff that is available to do those redactions and that can be a lengthy process and take a lot of staffing hours."
He says a body camera only records during investigations or when an officer feels it's necessary and video can be stored up to 109 years.
"It does come with a price tag of course," he said.
Gilder says each body camera costs about $400 and the annual fee to maintain the storage on one camera is about $1,200.
He says the department has applied for a grant to cover the costs.
"We are quite pleased with the program and the results of it," he said. "We have a lot of you know... it has exceeded our expectations at this point and we find there will be a lot of value down the road as we continue to develop our program."
