Bodycams lead to improved professionalism and quality of City Police

At present, the Bratislava City Police has 28 bodycams at its disposal (12 cams per 620 € plus VAT each and 16 cams per 678 € plus VAT each), distributed across the city police precincts. The police officers attach the cams onto their clothes or tactical vest when starting their shift and return them to the respective docking stations afterwards. The stations download the recording of the shift and charge the devices for further use.

“I am very glad that the Bratislava City Police is developing in terms of their technical equipment. By using bodycams, they converge with modern police forces in other of the world’s capital cities. The bodycams affect how the citizens and police officers behave on the streets. They have been proven to reduce aggressive behaviour, provide high-quality evidence and increase the professionalism of the police officers, protecting the public and the officers themselves. Thanks to the high-quality recording, we are now able to objectively evaluate the incidents and any complaints filed,” said Matúš Vallo, Mayor of the City of Bratislava.

Dealing with incidents and training of new police officers

Initial experience shows that, as soon as we inform aggressive or vulgar individuals that their actions are being monitored on camera, they tend to proceed with the situation in a more peaceful manner. “Recordings may be used as evidence in dealing with incidents and complaints. However, they may also be used to train new colleagues. They are able to gain valuable information at first hand. Thanks to the bodycams, we are able to evaluate the course of action at police interventions, leading to improvements in procedure. I am sure that the technology will be beneficial both to the city police and the residents of Bratislava,” said Miroslav Antal, Chief of the Bratislava City Police.

Of course, the bodycam recordings do not only serve to protect the people working on the streets of the city. They can also be used to reveal any shortcomings and to deal with them.

We improve the work of the city police in many ways

In 2021, we opened a new operations and CCTV centre, connecting it to other parts of the integrated rescue system. This reduced the response time during crises and improved efficiency when using force in the streets of Bratislava.

We continue to improve the work of the police, as we introduced our own IT system in early 2023, connected to a number of databases within the Ministry of the Interior, allowing us to work more efficiently – for example, when checking stolen vehicles, management of derelicts and offenders. The next step is use of the IT system by the city police patrols in the streets of Bratislava. A number of activities which are currently performed with pen and paper will become digital.

Technical information on bodycams

AXON BODY 3

HD quality of the recording and a 143° field of vision cams are designed to see and hear what might be seen and heard by an ordinary person IP67 protection 12+ hour battery life at continuous recording GPS integrated into the cam several automatic features included (e.g. automatic start of recording in the event of gunshots)