A proposal for body cameras for police officers moved forward at the Unified Government Public Works and Safety standing committee meeting Monday night at City Hall.

Police Chief Terry Zeigler said the Kansas City, Kan., Police Department would like to apply for a Department of Justice grant that would pay half of the costs of the body cameras.

The idea to apply for a grant is being sent to the full UG Commission for consideration with the understanding that if a grant was not received, the program might be canceled and police officers might not get body cameras.

Zeigler told the committee that the total cost of the first year of the program would be about $1,419,626, and the federal government might provide $600,000 of that amount. Only 12 police departments in the nation would be approved for a grant, however.

Zeigler said the program included a cost of $520,000 for fiberoptics that would be needed for moving these pictures from various stations to the headquarters. The police stations have not been wired yet for Google Fiber, as originally expected, so the cost figures were for fiber provided through the Board of Public Utilities.

“The reason we looked at BPU was, if we can’t get Google, what’s another option? And BPU seemed to be the next best option for us,” Ziegler asked.

Joe Connor, assistant county administrator, said the UG has been in contact with Google about getting fiber for the police stations and some of the sites that were promised, and is working through it legally now.

One resident, Janet Golubski, said she worked hard to get Google Fiber approved in the neighborhood, on the assumption that the stations and school would have Google Fiber. She said she and her neighborhood group are in favor of body cameras, and she thinks the UG should keep trying to work with Google over the installation of services.

According to Zeigler, the Police Department has cameras in some of its police cars, and a sergeant in the past has carried a camera media card containing the video from the police stations to the headquarters. Currently, the headquarters has wi-fi, allowing patrol cars in the east unit to automatically download the videos.

Without the fiber costs, the body camera program would be about $900,000, with about a $450,000 local cost, he said.

There would be about 285 cameras total in the program, for officers who work with the public, according to Col. Tyrone Garner.

The reason the cost is so high is not because of the $475 cost per camera, but for the storage of the videos, according to Garner.

Ongoing maintenance, storage and software license fees would be regular yearly expenses, according to Garner. In 2019, an additional 118 cameras would have to be purchased to replace cameras, he estimated.

It is a three-year grant, and after that, it would be up to the Police Department and local government to sustain the grant, Ziegler said.

“We think this is a pretty good strategy in implementing this. It gives us adequate coverage, so any officer involved in any type of enforcement activity or contact with the community would be wearing a camera,” Zeigler said.

The body camera idea was discussed in a strategic planning meeting about a week ago, and commissioners said if there was an opportunity to get a federal grant, the UG would work on it, and if not, the UG would not do it.

Also, if the UG finds that it does not have the money for its half of the program, it can decide not to go ahead with it, according to commissioners. The proposal that was approved tonight was to move this item to apply for a grant to the full UG Commission for consideration.