Motorola Solutions has entered the battle to provide police body cameras, fueled by growing demands for video evidence of encounters between citizens and law enforcement.
The Schaumburg-based company unveiled a new camera and storage system for law enforcement Tuesday as it aims to compete with Taser, a smaller competitor that has so far dominated the category.
The device combines a body camera, radio speaker and microphone into a single package, meaning less for an officer to wear.
Motorola Solutions also introduced CommandCentral Vault, a cloud-based evidence storage and management system that can also be used by those who collect data from other sources. It was built in partnership with Adobe Systems.
“What’s increasingly required is a solution that solves the problem of not only capturing video, but getting it to the right place,” and then making it easy to work with the stored data, said Paul Steinberg, chief technology officer of Motorola Solutions.
The company wouldn’t say how much the new technology would cost.
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Police-worn body cameras have surged in popularity in the past year, driven by events such as the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in which accounts of what happened varied widely.
In May, the White House announced it would provide $20 million to local police departments to support the purchase of body cameras. And in August Illinois established new state guidelines for body cameras and a fee attached to traffic tickets to help pay for them.
The U.S. is the global leader in adoption of such devices and home to about 600,000 beat cops who might use them while patrolling, said Steven Dyer, senior research analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group. He said prospective customers now expect all-in-one devices and need to keep up with the massive amounts of data those devices collect.
“Most sophisticated departments are looking for a lot more than a camera. It’s relatively easy to make a small body-mounted camera that takes a video clip,” Dyer said. “They’re looking for a common end-to-end solution that includes storage and that includes software for usability.”
Among those who provide such tools and services to American agencies and law enforcement, Dyer said, Taser is the clear leader.
“There are many hardware vendors who have followed us into this space, including Panasonic and now Motorola,” said Rick Smith, CEO and founder of Taser. “What matters most is a great user experience from capture to courtroom. The seamless integration of Axon cameras with Evidence.com is the reason 26 major cities have selected our platform — and that’s much harder to copy than just camera hardware.”
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company introduced its digital evidence management system, Evidence.com, in 2009 and its police body camera in 2012.
“I would have expected (Motorola Solutions) to have had a solution by now, only because I think this is a very legit competitor in this space,” Dyer said. But he questioned whether Motorola Solutions could secure police department contracts, given that many of the country’s top departments have already chosen providers or are deep in the process.
He expects most major departments to choose a provider in the next 12 to 24 months and described competition in the market as a “land grab.”
Motorola Solutions already provides services and products such as two-way radios to support communications for first responders.
CTO Steinberg said the new tools will allow Motorola Solutions to provide an “intelligent workflow” to first responders and teams.
“I think, humbly, we’re in a very good position,” he said. “We’re one of the very few companies that can actually realize that.”
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CORRECTION: This version reflects that Taser introduced its digital evidence management system in 2009 and its police body camera in 2012. A previous version incorrectly said that Motorola Solutions was nearly a year and a half behind Taser in introducing similar technology.