El Paso City Council votes to buy police department 500 new cameras

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- El Paso's City Council unanimously voted to buy the police department 500 additional body cameras. El Paso Police Executive Assistant Chief Zina Silva says there are four major reasons to having these body cameras: to promote public trust, increase public transparency, improve police accountability, and ensure public safety.

Last year the city purchased over 700 body cameras and installed 350 car camera systems. Chief Silva says it's now time to move to phase two of the process.

"We work your parades, your marathons, your ball games dignitary visits text out assignments and we back fill our patrol positions, and what we found is that because we have to utilize all of our staff to work these assignments everyone works in traffic and patrol positions so now it's imperative that we move into phase 2 of the body camera program," Chief Silva explained. "We need 500 more camera so that the entire police department is outfitted with the body camera system and able to have those camera systems when they are working these functions."

Silva said the additional 500 cameras will cost $4 million. So far the city has spent $7 million, which is still within the $11 million that was predicted in 2021.