Naples Police to get state-of-the-art cameras and tasers

Naples City Council voted to spend $1.74 million over five years to add body cameras and new technology and replace old tasers.

“Technology is the name of the game. It doesn’t matter what field you’re in, the advances just in my career, with law enforcement and technology have been immense,” said Lieutenant Bryan McGinn.

The five-year contract will cover 80 body cameras, 31 in-car camera systems, 80 tasers, 10 electronic control devices, cloud-based storage for associated evidence and software, as well as installation, licensing and warranties.

“On top of the body-worn cameras was also at Axon taser 10s,” McGinn added. “So that is a significant upgrade. And the models that we have now, it’s kind of the next generation in an energy weapon, which provides a longer range of distance for officers to be able to deploy such a thing.”

The new taser has ten individually targeted probes, while NPD’s current tasers have two.

“If you’ve encountered an individual, and the methods used to de-escalate the situation are not working,” McGinn explained, “we do have to deploy some sort of force; we can deploy a less lethal force such as this taser 10.”

“I think it’ll help the police officers to make sure that if there’s ever any discrepancies in what might have happened in a situation, so I think it protects them, and I think it also protects the public,” said Naples Mayor Teresa Heitmann.

This will be the department’s first time having body cameras, so WINK News asked Lieutenant McGinn with Naples police how it will help.

“Not only will it increase transparency. Now, we can have this other video evidence, evidentiary side of it with the body-worn aspect that officers will use as well,” he said.

The Naples Police Department is looking forward to using their new gear and expects to have the body-worn cameras and tasers by December or early next year.