Tulsa Police Officers Begin Training With New Body Cams

The Tulsa Police Department now has body cameras, and officers will get their cameras and training this week.

This is a long awaited event by the department and the public. They applied for the grant to get the cameras back in 2015, and now things are finally coming together.

One by one, officers walk into Tulsa police headquarters to pick up body cameras.

Officer Jason Edwards works a foot beat downtown and said he's ready to wear one.

"At any moment we could be encountered by the public and it makes it important for us to have the technology readily available to record that contact," Edwards said. 

All this week, the department is issuing one camera per officer currently on patrol.

Each officer will grab a camera, get it registered, sign up to have it connected to their car and then go through training.

"What this will offer us is a lot of transparency and as we all know law enforcement needs the transparency. It's good for the officers and good for the public," said TPD Sgt. Shane Tuell. 

Body cameras in law enforcement are becoming more and more in demand, especially over the last several years.

The push of a button will activate it and at that point, the camera will be rolling. 

Tulsa police have a select few officers who have been testing the technology while the department decided which camera to purchase.
Tuell said the officers are excited to finally get the cameras back.

"He said he wanted it because after having it and testing it, he felt naked without it and he was wanting to get one and use it as soon as possible because it actually got him out of a complaint," Tuell said.

Tuell said while body cameras aren't perfect and won't always tell the whole story, they will keep most officers and citizens in check.

Something Edwards said he's looking forward to.

Right now is just the rollout phase of the cameras as the departments work all the bugs out. They said they hope to have all of the cameras live and ready to go by the end of the year.