R2023-258 Resolution Authorizing the Purchase of Cradlepoint Routers and Antennas from CDW for the Decatur Police Department

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STAFF REPORT To: Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe City Council Members From: City Manager Scot Wrighton Chief Shane Brandel Subject: Purchase of Cradlepoint Routers BRIEFING ITEM RECOMMENDED ACTION: Approve by resolution the funding of Cradlepoint routers and antennas for the Decatur Police Department BACKGROUND: All marked Decatur Police Department squad cars are equipped with HD in-car video camera systems (ICV). These video systems are synced with vehicle equipment and officer worn body- cams. As such, when the body-cams are turned on, the ICV turns on, and vice versa. This is to ensure all video systems are activated when necessary and an officer does not have to manage 2 systems every time an activation is required. Doing this reduces the likelihood an officer will forget to activate one of the systems, especially under stress. These videos are stored on a removable solid state hard drive (SSD) in each car and are transferred to the video management system remotely over Wi-Fi at DPD Headquarters. In the event the ICV is unable to upload to the video management system,we are able to remove the SSD from the vehicle and manually offload any stored video. It is typical that every officer will have several hours of ICV video during each shift. Although there are a few Wi-Fi access points throughout the city for the videos to off-load, these spots aren't sufficient for all videos to be offloaded away from DPD. In addition, with the high quality of the video, the offload process can take considerable time. The offload time required has caused an issue with the ICVs being uploaded during shift changes. It has been discovered that the vehicles are not at Headquarters long enough to offload all of the videos. This then creates a large backlog of videos. When this happens, DPD personnel has to manually pull the SSD card and offload the videos. This is a time-consuming process and is an unnecessary burden on staff time. In addition, videos were found to have been held on hard drives for several days, which often causes other operational challenges and inefficiencies, as these videos are often used in investigations, policy compliance reviews and use of force/pursuit reviews. The IT Department began researching the problem this past summer in an effort to find a solution. After several months of research and trials, it has been determined that the solution is a two-step process. The first step is to outfit each squad car with a Cradlepoint Router. This