Thanks to an investment in video and audio by New Iberia City Council for the city police department, officers will have body cameras and multiple dash cameras in vehicles starting Dec. 12.

If an officer is at the scene of a crime and the person starts running, within seconds, every officer and dispatch employee will have photos of the person, the license plate and the images have GPS technology.

The public will also be able to send photos and video to the police which can instantly be sent to officers who are investigating a crime or on their way to the scene of an incident.

A recording will start with a call. If an officer starts running, video and audio starts recording.

“We have always had body cams since day one, but this one (Utility) is next-step technology,” said New Iberia Police Chief Todd D’Albor during training this past week. “We have moved to this technology and it is integrated into the uniform. The old body camera (looked like a large, bulky Go-Pro). These are built in so they can’t fall off. It is fail-safe. Each call that goes out, it flags to all body cams and as soon as that CAD call goes in, it will turn on all body cams within a large radius.”

“Officers don’t have to worry about starting a camera. Our sensors in the holster, the running, the lights in the cars, any situation, it will start,” said Ralph Romero, technical sales engineer for Utility. “The recording will start before the officer even presses record. GPS is built into every frame. In an action zone, the video will not stop recording even if someone tries to turn it off.”

D’Albor said the system will cost $500,000 which will be paid over a five-year period by the city.

“We didn’t have the funds before,” D’Albor said. “Now? I can see the suspect, and if I have to, I can see it live. I can take the recording, capture the image and send it to everyone and say ‘this is our perpetrator.’ Within seconds, everyone has the license plate and a photo of the suspect.”

In the early 2000’s, Utility was created as a fast modem using 3G technology with video for utility companies to help them with their trucks. When 4G technology arrived, they were downloading video and that’s when they were able to get into helping police departments. Utility purchased a video company and now call the video process Rocket by Utility and they have produced body cameras for police since 2015.

Harris County, Texas, is using Utility. Harris County has the third-largest police department in the nation. The Utility cameras do 5,000 recordings a day, Romero said.

Utility said the technology also helps police departments for transparent yet secure intelligence when “time and truth are critical.” The cameras inside the police cars will show four different wide-angle views.

According to Utility, these are some of the features:

GUN DRAWN: EOS detects the moment a firearm is removed from its holster and sends real-time alerts to dispatch and nearby officers when seconds mean lives and intelligence matters.

OFFICER DOWN: Suppose an officer becomes prone in the field or lies flat for several seconds (the duration determined by an individual agency). In that case, Officer Down notifies all cars in the district that an officer needs immediate assistance.

RECORDING EARLY: The assistive features operate seamlessly within our complete evidence ecosystem, using artificial intelligence to create situational awareness. It offers a two-minute buffer, which records even before a video is manually started, and several other automatic recording functionalities designed to remove the officers’ burden and allow them to focus entirely on the situation at hand.

LIGHTS, SIRENS, ACTION: EOS makes automatic, intelligent, and configurable decisions on when to start and stop recording. For example, when an officer’s lights and/or sirens are activated, recording automatically begins—allowing police officers to focus on serving the community.

FOOT PURSUIT: EOS detects when an officer is running and triggers the recording with a built-in accelerometer. This feature allows officers to focus on high-stress encounters and, if necessary for a case or training, will enable others to review how a pursuit began.

The dash cameras in the New Iberia Police Department cars will also have this technology.

Those features include:

READING THE PLATE: The Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) camera, developed in collaboration with Sony, receives BOLOs with vehicle information and gathers real-time evidence to enhance alerting capabilities.

MULTIPLE ANGLES AND AUDIO: With built-in digital video recording capabilities, Rocket by Utility powers up to four wide-angle cameras to capture the most critical moments and allows officers to record audio conversations as evidence. Officers can also hold their video cameras to take video evidence recordings of specific items or areas using the built-in previewer.

COMMANDER CENTER REVIEW: Rocket by Utility is accessible through a tablet application or a web browser. It can quickly start/stop recordings, view storage details, and play recorded incidents because having access to data should depend on you, not your location.

WATCH IT LIVE: Supervisors can start recording remotely and initiate live streams from an ongoing event in the field. The software also imports or creates map overlays for occasions like PredPol, Geofences, and more for extra patrolling or high crime areas.