Bonanza, AR, September 23, 2019 – Chief Michael Barber from the Bonanza Police Department has recently shared with WOLFCOM their experience with the Vision Body Cameras and WOLFCOM Evidence Management System. The department currently has a total of 4 officers equipped with WOLFCOM cameras.
According to Chief Barber, after doing a lot of research, WOLFCOM seemed to be the best fit for his department. “[After] looking at various bodycams and systems, WOLFCOM is actually the best fit for us,” said the Chief. After being asked why, he said “camera features, the size of the camera, the videos are non-proprietary, in other words, I can send that to the prosecuting attorney and be able to do that without having to have multiple places and different software to view the video.”
Bonanza P.D. officers like the versatility of the Vision Body Camera and make the best of it. “One of the things I really like is the rotating camera head. It allows us to wear it in multiple positions. When we’re doing interviews inside the station I can set it up more as an interview camera. We’re a super small department, so we have kind of have double duty,” said the Chief. “We use the cameras basically almost like a notepad and we’re able to conduct our interviews and do that on the scene and not spend a lot of time writing but be able to go back and review these and get all the little details that we may miss if we just put on paper,” he added.
According to the Chief, his favorite feature about the WEMS is “the ability to actually create an entire case file within WEMS and then be able to burn that into a CD. I can upload all documents, other pictures and everything, and create a complete case file and then hand that CD out, it’s much easier.”
Luckily for the Bonanza P.D., the city was very supportive about purchasing a body camera system for their officers. “It actually was [easy to obtain budget for the body camera program]. We’ve got a really good city council here and they are really supportive. They see the need for having those body cameras. There were several incidents going on nation-wide during that time and we were really behind on getting those body cameras set up,” said the Chief.
Chief Michael Barber refers WOLFCOM to other agencies on a regular basis. “I do regularly [refer WOLFCOM]. A couple of surrounding agencies are also kinda in that mix of looking for something that’s affordable and both of those Chiefs have been looking at WOLFCOM stuff. It’s just a matter of getting them budgeted to purchase,” said Chief Barber.