Ashwaubenon Public Safety Department gets new body cameras with help from Packers
ASHWAUBENON, Wis. (WBAY) - This week, 51 body cameras arrived at the Ashwaubenon Public Safety Department.
“One of my goals was to bring body cameras here,” said Chief Brian Uhl, who joined Ashwaubenon Public Safety a year ago.
Along with the body cameras came tasers and new squad car cameras from Axon.
“The fleet cameras are pretty old; I can’t give you a date on that. I did look at the tasers and some of them are over 18 years old. Most electronic equipment usually lasts for about five and then they’re really not supported anymore,” said Chief Uhl.
Chief Uhl says the new equipment will provide transparency and accountability both inside and outside the department.
“I can tell you that most citizen complaint with these cameras I can solve within a matter of minutes because I don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, I can just go look at the video.”
Village leaders say the purchase could not have been made without support from the Packers.
The team pitched in about $200,000 including discounts from Axon to help offset costs.
“It’s just something that’s so costly that without something like that, it’s just really difficult to get that into your program because of the data storage. the data storage is so expensive,” said Village President, Mary Kardoskee.
With this purchase, Ashwaubenon, Green Bay and De Pere officers will all be using the Axon system, which will make sharing information much easier.
“We will understand the videos that we’re going to be getting, sharing if we need to in order to manage evidence better; but the District Attorney’s office... it will really streamline things for them because they won’t have to figure out how to download and figure out how to manage different types of evidence,” said Chief Uhl.
The Chief hopes to have all of his officers trained and outfitted with the cameras in the next two months.
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