Pueblo will receive more body cams and stun guns
More members of the Pueblo Police Department will be wearing body cameras.
City council unanimously approved the funding tonight for the cameras, along with unlimited storage for videos from the cameras and stun guns.
Patrol officers wear them now, but Chief Luis Velez is expanding the coverage to others, including code enforcement and school resource officers.
Police will have 34 body cameras for sergeants, school resource officers and code enforcement officers. Patrol officers began wearing body cameras in January.
City code enforcement manager Karen Willson said the cameras are a much-needed game changer and will help when confronting people about their property.
“With the body cameras you would have an absolute visual of everything that I’m seeing here as I walk through it,” Willson told KRDO NewsChannel 13 while walking through a sidewalk on the lower eastside covered in weeds.
Complaints of overgrown, obnoxious weeds is an all too familiar story for Willson.
“Heavy rains early in the year created worse weed problems than we’ve had in many, many years,” Willson said.
But Willson said body cameras could change the types of complaints her office handles.
“We never use force — never. But there are complaints sometimes that we do,” Willson said.
Deputy Chief Troy Davenport said body cameras have proven to work with patrol officers and he believes it’ll help code enforcement, too.
“Our hope is that cameras will have a similar effect in that everybody will communicate a little better and be a little bit better received,” Davenport said.
Willson said she’s seen too many cases where body cameras could have benefited her officers.
“When the residents realize that we’re coming there, they’ll let the dogs out usually right after we get inside the gate, things like that,” she said.
But that kind of intimidation tactic may soon be caught on video.
Police will also receive 137 stun guns. The equipment will cost about $1 million that will be paid over the next five years.
Pueblo police also applied for grant money from the U.S. Department of Justice, but they were denied. Colorado Springs Police Department received a $600,000 grant for body cameras.
