Texas City Pays Millions to Store Cops' Body Cam Footage

Police officer body cameras can cost anywhere between $350 and $700 apiece, according to a report by Reuters. But the price of storage is even higher.

Bloomberg reported that Taser International — the weaponry company currently cornering the market in body cam technology — just signed a $2.7 million, 5-year contract with the Fort Worth Police Department in Texas.

That $2.7 million covers the licensing and video storage for the company's application, "Evidence.com," and buys the police department 64 terabytes of storage a year, enough Taser says will hold data from 420 cameras. According to Bloomberg, Taser threw the cameras and accessories in for free.

Although Taser's application uses an Amazon platform to host the video files, its storage services is 23 times as expensive as the price Amazon charges for its own storage service.

Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle told Bloomberg that Evidence.com is much more than a storage system, calling it "an ecosystem." For example, activity within the app will be closely tracked, ensuring that the metadata — the information that says where and when the video was recorded — cannot be tampered with after it's recorded. These features would theoretically serve to squash allegations of officers adjusting or deleting recordings.

Related: Tamir Rice Report Finds No Hard Evidence Cop Gave Warning to Raise Hands Before Shooting

In May, the US Justice Department announced that it would provide $20 million in grants to police departments to buy body camera technology for officers. This was the first portion of a $75 million, three-year program requested by President Obama that, if approved, would make body cameras an integrated part of policing in the US.

Evidence.com advertises an elaborate security framework that could potentially mitigate growing concerns around surveillance as a result of body cameras. Ever since body cameras became part of a national conversation as a result of a number of high-profile, deadly officer-involved incidents, so have their effects on people's privacy rights.

There is currently no uniform policy on how long a police department should retain body cam footage. The American Civil Liberties Union recommends that footage be kept for 6 months, after which it should be automatically deleted. But as the contract between Fort Worth and Taser shows, storage doesn't come cheap.

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