With budget cuts looming in every Somerville department, some city councilors argued Tuesday that it wasn’t time for police officers to be equipped with body-worn cameras that will cost around $450,000 annually. The proposal to accept an initial grant that incurs those expenses was tabled by the Finance Committee to await more information.
There is a way the expense pays for itself, said Ben Struhl, an expert in crime and justice studies at Northeastern University and the University of Pennsylvania and chair of Somerville’s Public Safety for All task force. Studies in places such as Boston show body-worn cameras reduce officer use of force and citizen complaints about the police.
Because answering citizen complaints – and potential legal payouts – can be costly, cameras create about $5 in benefit for every $1 spent, Struhl said, though “the benefit to Somerville financially could be lower if Somerville does not have a lot of complaints against the police.”
There will be more conversation about the cameras at Thursday’s meeting of the City Council, which includes a closed-to-the-public session on the topic, staff said.
Cameras are also on the April 28 agenda for the council’s Legislative Matters Committee, which will take up the surveillance technology aspect of the devices. The finance committee will likely discuss them again on their next meeting on May 12. Another full council meeting is set for May 14, when all these pieces might come together.
Information about how much Somerville pays to handle resident complaints about police wasn’t offered Tuesday, which seemed to encourage Finance Committee chair Ben Wheeler to move to table the item. “I don’t mean to string this along, but I do want to allow for more information to come our way,” Wheeler said. “The financial question could be swayed based on information. I’m not saying I expect it to be.”
The rationale didn’t go over well with councilor J.T. Scott – “I find it shocking that the argument is made that there’s so much misconduct that having cameras will reduce our cost as a city,” he said – but he identified early in the discussion that he was dubious about adding big line items to the police budget at a time “every department is being asked to look for 5 percent” to cut.
The costs of cameras
Somerville is offered a $231,635 state grant to buy, install, train on and maintain police body-worn cameras. This is the last year of such funding being offered by the state, chief of police Shumeane Benford said. More than 80 departments applied for the grant, and 30 got the funding. “We were very fortunate to receive one of the largest rewards,” Benford said.
The cameras are subscription based, though, and all but $50,281 of the state grant is spent in the first year, with the rest of the costs becoming Somerville’s: $45,553 in tech costs in year two, then a full $95,834 in year three. In addition, police bargained for a 2 percent bump in pay to accept the cameras, a $215,000 annual cost over the department’s two unions, and there are associated costs expected for additional staff – a full-time civilian employee to manage the program and its data, Scott surmised – and the need to buy and replace batteries and cameras at around a combined $135,000. A staff memo warns further that “there may be additional costs as a result of ongoing collective bargaining negotiations with the impacted unions.” This will be discussed with the council in another closed-door session, the memo said.
Chief advocates for tech
“This as an extraordinary increase” to a police budget of $21 million a year, Scott said.
Wheeler agreed: The grant “quickly gets dwarfed by the recurring cost,” he said. “The value that we’ll get from this, from this much cost, it still feels pretty speculative … in this time of of tight budgets, it makes it hard for me to to feel supportive.”
Benford advocated for the equipment, saying that “trust building and transparency with our community also has a value.”
The chief also alluded to an experience that showed him all too vividly the potential value of the technology. “I only wish that body-worn cameras existed when a police officer told me that he was going to kill me,” Benford said. He had to work alongside the officer for several years.
Councilors vote
Councilor Kristen Strezo aligned with Benford and said she believed the cameras were “good for transparency.”
“I want to make sure that our community feels safe and that they feel supported,” Strezo said.
Scott’s skepticism was echoed by councilor Jon Link, though, who noted that the cameras were no guarantee against citizen complaints or legal payouts. Councilor Emily Hardt walked a middle line and said she wanted more information – not just about whether current payouts showed a need to try to change officer behavior by literally watching what they do, but around the policies that would guide that technology’s use.
When Wheeler called for a vote on tabling the matter for the upcoming council and committee meetings, the vote ran 3-2. Wheeler, Strezo and Hardt were in favor of the tabling, and Scott and Link opposed it and suggested they were ready to recommend the full council reject the grant.
This post was updated April 24, 2026, with additional and revised information for meetings ahead concerning body-worn cameras.
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