A Tomball Police Department officer wears a new L3 Mobile Vision body-worn camera. The new technology was put into action Aug. 17 on all 42 full-time and three part-time officers at the department.[/caption]

The Tomball Police Department began outfitting its 42 full-time and three part-time officers with new L3 Mobile Vision body-worn cameras Aug. 17, Tomball police Chief Billy Tidwell said.

In mid-March, Tomball City Council approved the allocation of $20,000 to purchase the new cameras and an additional $20,000 to secure real-time video streaming for its 13 police vehicles, he said.

“We’ve had a couple of occasions where we’ve had officers say, ‘I’m really glad I had this [body-worn] camera on today because I encountered someone who wanted to be confrontational, and it turned out it won’t be an ‘I said, they said’ situation,’” Tidwell said.

According to policy, TPD officers are authorized to record all calls for service and enforcement stops that do not violate privacy laws. An officer is permitted to end a recording if there is no evidentiary value in a contact with the community and must vocalize the reason, Tidwell said.

For a more in-depth look at the new body-worn cameras, read the upcoming Tomball/Magnolia September edition of Community Impact Newspaper.