After Deadline: City spikes $300K camera system for cop cars, gets its money back
Modesto early this year pulled the plug on a program intended to record what cops see on patrol with video cameras on their dashboards.
The roughly $300,000 investment fell victim first to technical problems and then to a change in ownership over the company that supplied the equipment.
Modesto didn't lose a dime on the project, except for the time it spent installing and trying to use the cameras.
Dell Inc., which won a contract to provide the cameras in January 2008, reimbursed the city.
It wasn't Dell equipment going in the cars, however. Dell hired North Carolina-based Integrian to supply the cameras. Integrian now goes by Digital Safety Technologies, and DST reportedly wasn't keen to either fix the equipment to make it functional, or to reimburse the city.
Gary Cook, Modesto's information technology director, said Dell stepped in and took responsibility for the contract.
Cook said the money is in the bank and Modesto is awaiting word on how it can use the cash. It came from a state grant and the city has to check on whether it can spend the money on new cameras down the road, or if the funds should go to a different purpose.
He said Modesto remains interested in placing video cameras on patrol cars. "Now it's mainly a matter of when we can afford it," he said.
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The dash-cams in the swordsman killing
I wonder if we could get the video of the swordsman killing. After_Deadline are there any dates, when you say earlier this year, and was it before or after the swordsman incident ? when they pulled the dash-cams.
If it's at all possible I vote for keeping the restrooms and
parks completely open all year in our parks.
Before
Cook said these cameras were turned off in about February, and that didn't work, anyway. The city had 19 cameras, half of which failed.
Sounds like poor decision making..
you would think if you were going to spend $300,000.00 that you ould want to see a few references, preferably good ones...:)
They did
Integrian apparently was a leader in this field, but it was bought and lost an incentive to provide much customer service. Seems like it's a wash except for the time spent on it because of Dell's reimbursement.
I'm glad we didn't lose any money...
but it still doesn't sound like a good decision.
We still don't know how many times the swordman
was shot.