Page 356 - NIXBOOK

So. Speaking of cell phones… it was in the late 1990’s when cell phones were starting
to become popular and our department got a couple. The first ones were ridiculous
huge things; the batteries were bigger than the phones and required a small luggage
bag to carry them both around in, so they were commonly called “bag phones.”

The next few models were hard wired into the sergeant’s cars to avoid the battery
issue, and then much smaller pocket sized phones were introduced and most of the
officers bought one for themselves. Back in those days they were paid for by the
minute; usually around .25 or .30 cents but we qualified for “government/municipal”
rates which dropped it down to I think around .15 cents per minute.

It took a few years for the Chief to break down and realize that he was going to have start budgeting to get a cell phone for each
officer. Until that happened, we all used our own new personal cell phones to make work calls. Which of course caused some
grumblings because we were paying for it ourselves. But it beat the old days, when we were out driving around on patrol, and
when the dispatchers called us on our radios and told us that a citizen needed had called 911 and they needed a phone call from
one of us. Which meant we’d have to drive back to the station and use a phone there to call them. Because we didn’t have cell
phones with us! This also reminds me that in the days before cell phones and the internet, when an officer off duty wanted to
see if he could maybe start his shift a few hours later, or take a day off, he’d have to call the desk phone at the police station and
hope somebody was there to answer it, because that was the only way to talk to the officers on duty then.

Those first phones we had issued were clamshell type “dumb” flip
phones that were good for phone calls and literally nothing else.
No texting, no camera, no internet…just making and taking phone
calls. In fact, the display screen for those phones had only one or
two lines for the phone number, and that’s all.
It was around 2006 that we got our first in-car video cameras for
some of the crown Victoria patrol cars. The recording units fit into
the area in dashboard where the am/fm radios were; the stock
radios were removed and the camera unit was installed. The actual
camera itself was mounted up on the windshield by the mirror.
The big stupid thing was huge, as you can see in these generic
photos I found on the innernets. It required a ridiculous amount
of wiring, which took our city mechanic several hours each to wire
them all in. As the years went by we installed more cameras in our
cars. They got better; eventually the camera and everything were built into a housing the size and shape of a very large center
rearview mirror; they in fact replaced our stock mirrors. (some of the early camera systems had the recoding drive stashed in
the trunk because it too big to fit anywhere else) The newer models even had an external microphone about the size of a deck
of cards, which of course needed to be put in a dock to recharge every other day or so. The microphone was worn on our belts
or uniforms, and recorded the audio from when we got out to do traffic stops.
The cameras would record only what they were aimed at directly in front of our cars. So they we good for documenting traffic
stops, and not much else. They had terrible user interfaces with stupid buttons instead of touch screens and each unit cost brand
new a ridiculous $5,000 dollars. Plus several hundred more for the labor to install them. In 2014 we had them all finally removed
out of our cars, at a cost of about $200 dollars each because the
mechanic salvaged all the cords and plugs and wiring
harnesses intact, for resale. Each unit – camera, wires, and
everything -was then sold at auction for, well, about $200
bucks each. So..yeah…it would have cheaper just to literally rip
them all out and just throw them away.

Eventually we replaced all of our car cameras with bodycams.
Which captured exactly zero traffic violations, because they
were all worn on our chests which gave them no view at all out
our front window.