Kewanee police will be getting much-needed new body cameras, and a better method of storing the tapes the cameras create.
At Monday’s meeting, the City Council approved the purchase of 22 cameras for officers and nine cameras for police vehicles, The department will also move to cloud storage for the body camera tapes, instead of the computer server that has been used.
The total cost of the upgrade is $183,230. Police Chief Steven Kijanowski said the city received a $247,000 allocation of public safety funds from the county and part of that money can be used for the body cameras. He said the department will also seek grant funding to support the purchase.
In a report to the council, Kijanowski said the body cameras the Kewanee officers have worn for years are obsolete, and Motorola, the company that made them, will no longer service them after next year.
Kijanowski told the council Monday that the switch to cloud storage is important because the computer the department has been using to store the body camera footage has crashed twice. One of those times, all the data on the computer was lost; most of it was recovered after the other crash.
The price of the upgrade also includes a five-year agreement with Motorola to service the camera equipment, and set it up. Kijanowski said it could be a couple of months before the new cameras are delivered.
In another police-related action, the council Monday approved the purchase of new equipment for the department’s K9 vehicle for $22,083 from RaCom in Moline,
Also Monday:
— The council discussed changing the charge for a one-use liquor license from $250. The council has received complaints from the community that the charge is too high, particularly for charitable organizations raising money.
The fee is for events being held on city property such as streets and parking lots.
City staff has proposed reducing the fee to $100 for a single-day event, and $150 for an event lasting up to four days.
— Variance requests were granted to Marvin and Janet Stevenson for their property at 242 Grier St. and Colby and Caitlin Hathaway.
— A bid of $32,524 for repairing the north trash chute at the city transfer station was approved. Grain Equipment Group of Wyoming will do the work.
