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Davenport Council Approves Purchase Of Police Body Cams

The Davenport Police Department conducted a year-long search to choose a bidder for its latest initiative: buying body cameras for its 163-officer force.
Mariah Woelfel
/
WVIK

The Davenport City Council has approved a major contract to purchase body cameras for the city's 150 police officers.

The $550,000 deal with technology and software company Axon includes the cameras, charging equipment, maintenance, and cloud-based storage for video footage.

It comes after a year of interviews and test-runs with at least four different companies interested in securing a contract.

Axon says it provides cameras to over half of the country's major police departments. After selling stun guns for over 20 years, the company renamed and rebranded itself in April with a mission to "make the bullet obsolete."

The company also sells software that provides automatic face redaction and allows officers to more easily share footage with prosecutors.