Miami-Dade police director has new plan for body cameras

Idea would allow department to fight crime from police headquarters

DORAL, Fla. ā€“ The Miami-Dade Police Department armed all of its officers with body cameras earlier this year, but now the police director has a grand new plan for those cameras.

From Facebook Live to FaceTime, we stream live video on a daily basis, but the director of the Miami-Dade Police Department said he has a new, innovative idea that could change the way police respond to emergency situations.

It's becoming a common practice throughout the country: law enforcement agencies using body cameras while fighting crime.

In South Florida, the Miami-Dade Police Department is seeing positive results on a daily basis.

"Currently, we have close to 1,300 body cameras rolled out," said Director Juan Perez, of the Miami-Dade Police Department. "We did successfully deploy, and surpassed our expectations."

But Perez said he has a vision, an innovative idea that would allow his department to fight crime from police headquarters.

"Why not get to a point that, when our technology that, when that button is hit on the radio, it also activates the camera, so that we can automatically know that the officers are in an emergency situation and we can stream live to a location like this, a real-time crime center, and now our supervisor can manage the situation for our officers so they don't have to be engaging with the suspect and engaging with the radio," Perez said.

Perez makes it clear that the livesteams would only be used during an emergency situation.

"We are talking about a need where there's an active shooter, or a gun fight going on, critical situation that we can tap in and help the officer survive, or help the citizens who are there survive," Perez said.

The director said that right now, there's no technology to support his vision, but he's hopeful that it will be developed in the near future.

"Bottom line, we get there quick enough and know what we are facing, we will be able to save lives," Perez said.