Union donation allows Las Vegas police to purchase new body cameras

The Metropolitan Police Department is getting 10 new body cameras after a private donation from a local union, Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Tuesday afternoon.

The $10,000 donation surprised the department, and it is the first Metro has ever received specifically for body cameras. It was donated July 8, the day after the Dallas shooting that left five officers dead.

Tommy White, an official with the union that donated the money — Laborers International Union of North America Local 872 — said the shooting struck a chord with him. After the shooting, he decided to earmark the donation specifically for more Metro body cameras while chatting with a woman he works with, whose husband is a Metro officer.

“During that conversation, I asked her, ‘Does your husband have a body camera?’” White said. “And she said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘He will now.’”

The sheriff said each camera costs about $1,000, because a significant portion of each purchase is spent increasing storage capabilities, so Metro officers can save footage from each shift, every day. The more cameras the department purchases, the less the department will have to continually spend on storage, he said.

“A lot of the things that occur in police work and law enforcement is, ‘He said, she said,’ and the people are asking for better answers associated with events that take place, especially when it involves use of force,” Lombardo said. “Body cameras have come forward as a partial solution. It’s not a panacea, it’s a partial solution for us to be more professional and bring forward that transparency that the community is demanding.”

Lombardo said he made a campaign promise to outfit about 1,700 officers with body cameras in the first three fiscal years since his election. The department now owns 1,372 cameras, and about 900 officers are equipped with them, Lombardo said, jokingly adding that White’s donation “is actually making me speed up that timeline.”

“Body cameras can be used to exonerate officers who are wrongly accused, and body cameras can be used to implicate officers who, in a particular instance, have made a bad judgment call,” said state Sen. Aaron D. Ford, D-Las Vegas, who introduced White during the announcement.

The sheriff added that since March 2014, when Metro body cameras were first implemented, more than 130 “frivolous complaints” against officers were dismissed after reviewing body camera footage.

“I challenge the hotels, and I challenge the big corporations here in Las Vegas to match our $10,000 and do what’s right for Metro and do what’s right for the community,” White said.

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Find @rachelacrosby on Twitter.