VBPD Augments Body Worn Cameras with In-car Mobile Video Recorders

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – the Virginia Beach Police Department (VBPD) has completed the installation of Axon’s Fleet 3 Mobile Video Recorders (MVRs) in 215 marked police department vehicles. These MVRs will not only capture the activity in front of the police car (i.e., traffic stops, vehicle pursuits, etc.) but additional camera angles will record activity occurring in the rear seat such as the transport of arrested persons. In addition to our Axon Body Worn Cameras (BWCs), the MVRs will provide a secondary view or vantage point to document the interaction between the VBPD and our community.

The addition of MVRs is one of several changes in the past 18 months to provide VBPD officers with the technology and policy to increase transparency regarding police operations. These changes include:

• All sworn officers are now issued a Body Worn Camera (BWC) to be utilized when working in an operational capacity or off-duty—police-related secondary employment. The prior deployment plan did not include supervisors or officers assigned outside of the four patrol precincts.
• The pre-activation recording (buffering) time for BWCs was increased from 30 seconds prior to activation to 2 minutes prior to activation.
• Patrol officers responding to Calls for Service requests are now required to activate their BWC upon dispatch to an incident, instead of upon arrival—where they could immediately be thrust into a critical incident, diverting their attention from manually activating the BWC.

Chief Paul Neudigate stated, “The VBPD remains committed to improving accountability and transparency with the community by implementing additional, innovative technologies. I am proud to announce the addition of MVRs to our technology platform where they will assist our officers in capturing video of traffic and criminal law violations which will enhance prosecution efforts, while also providing a more objective assessment of encounters between our officers and citizens that may find themselves the subject of a traffic stop.”

###