A technological upgrade coming soon to the Gilroy Police Department will give officers the latest equipment and also allow the public to submit digital evidence to help solve crimes.
The Gilroy City Council unanimously approved a 10-year contract with Axon Enterprises for nearly $3.8 million on June 19, allowing officers the ability to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology over the next decade.
The contract will equip the department with new body-worn and in-vehicle cameras, tasers and unlimited data storage for captured footage, among other things. The department will receive new equipment periodically throughout the duration of the contract, especially important when its current cameras, in service since 2016, are no longer supported by the manufacturer, according to Captain Juan Rocha.
Rocha said video footage from officers’ cameras is currently stored on an in-house server, which is often unreliable and fails to automatically upload data.
Rocha added that Gilroy Police may be the last agency in the county that still physically delivers video evidence to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, noting that there were 1,300 requests from the office that had to be driven up to Morgan Hill or San Jose in 2022.
With the new system, the DA’s office can remotely access the evidence through the cloud-based server.
The new body-worn cameras will also activate automatically when an officer unholsters their weapon or activates their vehicle’s emergency lights, greatly reducing the possibility of an officer forgetting to turn on their cameras when they respond to an incident, according to Rocha. The cameras also allow an officer’s supervisor to view the footage in real-time remotely.
The police department will also have access to Evidence.com, where it can reach out to the public to submit digital evidence for certain incidents.
“Technology is evolving at a pace that is nearly impossible to keep up with,” Rocha said. “The 10-year contract will ensure we have modern-day technology that will increase the safety of our officers and our transparency efforts with the community.”
