Denver police officers already wear vests and guns for protection on the street, but a camera about the size of a deck of cards could offer them protection in court.

The adoption of wearable video devices would be something of a shift for a department that until now has been a bit camera-shy. Along with State Patrol officers, Denver police do not use dashboard cameras.

But many law enforcement agencies across the country, including Fort Collins and Lone Tree in the metro area, are embracing video/audio technology to record their interactions with the public.

Advocates say cameras can help secure convictions in court and keep officers and the people they encounter more accountable. A judge this summer ordered New York police officers to wear body cams to help restore public confidence after their stop-and-frisk practices came under fire.

“It’s an objective third eye if there is ever a dispute between an officer or a citizen,” said Mike Fergus, program director in the technology center of the International Chiefs of Police Association. “(Agencies) realize it does protect the department, it protects the officers, and it protects the public if there is a question about what happened. It’s very, very valuable.”

Denver police are once again considering the use of wearable cameras and say they have many questions to answer before they decide whether to join the growing nationwide trend. But Police Chief Robert White has been a proponent.

Fort Collins and Lone Tree police officials offer high praise for body cams.

“Our work involves a lot of chaos,” Fort Collins Information Services Capt. Cory Christensen said. “The video demonstrates the work in light of that chaos.”

A group of 20 officers who patrol Fort Collins’ downtown bar district, often on foot, started wearing a Taser-brand model last year to document their interactions with sometimes-drunken citizens. Their supervisors liked the results so much that they have planned to attach cameras to 40 more officers next year. The department paid about $181,000 for its 60 cameras and associated storage, Christensen said.

Officers are told to videotape most contacts they make with a person by pressing a button on the device. A buffer catches the 30 seconds before the officer started taping to give observers an idea of how a situation escalated. The onus is on the officer to turn it off and on.

So far this year, the downtown unit hasn’t clocked a single complaint, Christensen said. In 2012, there were six.

“I know the cameras are playing into this,” he said, recalling a situation in which a man complained to a sergeant that one of his officers was rude. They watched the video together, and the man changed his mind, Christensen said.

Officers from the unit also are spending less time in court.

“I have anecdotal stories from prosecutors who say they are showing the videos, and the person goes, ‘OK, I need to take a plea agreement. I shouldn’t have been like that.’ “

But they’re spending more time at the station. About 20 minutes of each shift is spent downloading footage, Christensen said.

Lone Tree officers recently switched from a more cumbersome model that officers clipped on their eyeglasses or lapels to a wireless one that peers out from their chests. The older cameras had wires that led to a battery pack in an officer’s pocket and had an “aggressive” look that scared some children, Cmdr. Ron Pinson said. Officials hope to outfit the department’s 36 patrol officers with the sleeker model soon.

Denver police officers often are captured on video, be it on the department’s hundreds of HALO cameras perched on light poles or on countless onlookers’ cellphones.

But the department has not been interested in mounting cameras on car dashboards. Officials say such cameras would not capture most of their interactions with the public.

Denver tried body cameras once before, in a 60-day pilot program two years ago that yielded few conclusions, except that the department needed to do more research.

“The only thing that came out that would help us moving forward was that some of these systems created a huge administrative piece for the officers,” Cmdr. Magen Dodge said. “They were in the offices downloading video, and we cannot afford to have officers off the street, away from their precincts.”

The department hopes to do another trial within the next six months to learn what it would take to outfit some of its 1,398 officers. There’s no money in the current budget specifically for cameras.

Popular camera models, such as those by Taser, can sell for as much as $500 each, according to its website.

“We’re not talking chump change,” Dodge said. “If we looked at what some other departments have done as far as what they have, we’re looking at possibly several million dollars. It’s not as simple as buying a camera at Best Buy.”

Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com

