Belleville body camera business seeing global demand

Law enforcement agencies across the country and around the world have a metro-east company in focus.

Police departments from Baltimore to the United Kingdom are pursuing Fire Cam in Belleville as a potential supplier of body-worn, video-shooting equipment for officers to wear on the job. Company founder and metro-east firefighter Rob Schield established his company in 2008 initially to provide video cameras that firefighters could use to record and document structure fires.

Last August, when teenager Michael Brown Jr. was shot by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, Schield was developing a video camera for police officers to wear. Instantly, he found his body-worn cameras and video technology was in demand.

“We were just sitting in the right place at the right time,” Schield said.

He said he has seen his business increase by 20 percent over the last several months. To date, Schield estimates that Fire Cam has sold 500 units with hundreds more pending.

Freeburg Police Department has purchased five cameras and a pending bid for the New York City Police Department would equip 35,000 officers. His company has learned that it has been selected by one of the largest law enforcement sectors in the Southern Hemisphere, with details expected to be announced later this month.

Schield’s cameras provide pre-event recording, meaning the device has a standby mode that silently records the previous three minutes prior to activation. The device has a 150-degree lens to give a peripheral view that is streamed to police viewing the live footage at another site.

Last October, Schield was in the development stage when the Department of Justice issued a report about body camera recommendations for law enforcement.

“That was a game changer,” Schield said. “We were in the middle of building the software. We have had a lot of police departments inquire about our products.”

However, police departments in Illinois are waiting to see if Gov. Bruce Rauner will sign Senate Bill 1304, which would require police departments to keep video for 90 days and then indefinitely if it is part of a complaint or investigation. An extra $5 charged on all traffic tickets would pay for the operation of body cameras and footage captured.

But some local law enforcement officials, including Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, have said the law would be difficult to comply with because investment needed for the necessary personnel and resources would exceed their means.

“The general consensus right now is we can’t the way the law is written now,” Sax said. “We just can’t operate and run the program the way we feel that it should be run under these restrictions and how the law is currently structured and worded.”

Schield said the bill presents a potential capacity nightmare given the required video storage required under the legislation. But he also sees an opportunity because his company can accommodate law enforcement with in-house servers and cloud storage.

“We offer both of those solutions,” he said. “We can license the software to them or they can actually add their videos or files to our chain of custody cloud storage.”

He sees a potential problem with the bill’s requirement of police to digitally redact images of people not directly involved by manually blurring their faces or other identifying information.

“The only thing that I see will affect us really is the facial recognition part of it,” he said. “They would have to make sure that software is very easily usable for police officers. This would almost be a piece of equipment that have standard operating procedures and guidelines that you would have to follow.”

Freeburg Police Det. Mike Schutzenhofer said the department has four body cameras from Fire Cam but have not accessed them as village officials draft policies to govern their use. But as the acting fire chief in neighboring Smithton, Schutzenhofer has witnessed great results from cameras that are used to documents scenes of fires and train firefighters.

“They work awesome,” Schutzenhofer said. “It’s great for training. You can come back and critique them. When some guys make decisions, some get tunnel vision. This way, when you show them the video, it gives them different perceptions and different outlooks on this and gives them more ideas.”

Belleville Fire Chief Tom Pour said his department has also used the cameras and has seen similar results.

“It helps us in the training process as well,” Pour said. “When they talk to people on scene to get eyewitness account, they can take statements on tape so that when we can go back and write reports they’re never second-guessing what has been said. When they’re using a voice recorder, they can go back and listen to exactly what was said. So for us it’s a big help.”

Pour also said the cameras are “user friendly,” because the buttons are easy to access.

“It’s really simple to use,” he said. “You press a button and you know it works because it beeps and vibrates. Someone just can’t turn it on and go to turn it off. You have to hold the button down to stop recording. It’s just really easy to use.”

Schield said the video recording has provided law enforcement a tool to help investigate fires.

“Somebody tried to sue a fire department in Washington,” he said. “They said they were negligent while they were extricating somebody out of a vehicle and they didn’t know they had their cameras on. They ended up taking it to court; they saw the video; the fire department was not found negligent and it was thrown out of court.”

He expects that his body cameras will also help police fight crime.

“It’s going to happen.”

This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Belleville body camera business seeing global demand."