The Starkville Police Department received approval from the Board of Aldermen Tuesday to purchase 32 new body-worn cameras for officers, along with an analog camera to be placed in the Cotton District.
The Board voted unanimously to cease negotiations with Cadence Bank, who offered to sell its building located on Main Street to the city to serve as a new SPD headquarters for $2.55 million. Instead, it is likely the building currently serving as City Hall will be renovated to better suit the Police Department’s needs once the Mayor’s office and various departments move into the new building. The new facility, located on Main Street near Pita Pit and Mugshots, is nearing completion. 
SPD Chief Frank Nichols said they will receive the body-worn cameras in about one month. He said officers will wear these cameras while on duty.
“They interact with the car cameras,” Nichols said. “Whenever you turn the blue lights on, the car cameras automatically come on and so do the body cameras.” 
The new cameras will also start to upload videos as soon as squad cars come within range of the servers located at the police department. 
The 32 new cameras, which cost just over $46,000, will not be the first body-worn cameras the department has used. Nichols said when he took over the department last year, one of his first initiatives was to purchase body cameras for the department to cut back on complaints filed against officers.
However, Nichols said these first cameras were cheap and prone to malfunction and do not have many of the features the new ones will. 
Nichols said SPD now receives about one complaint a month, as opposed to once a week as it did before implementing body-cameras. 
“Without a doubt we use them all the time,” Nichols said. “As soon as I get a complaint, I pull the camera.” 
The analog camera, which will be placed on a utility pole on the intersection of Maxwell Street and University Drive, will cost $3,899. It will be the third such camera to be implemented in Starkville by the SPD, the other two being located on Main Street. The cameras will be used to watch over the busy district. The devices will not be used to issue traffic citations, although the footage can be used as evidence in court.
“We’re putting them up to monitor the activities that are going on over there to make sure all the citizens are safe,” Nichols said. “There is a lot of drinking that goes on over there, and where there is drinking there is often fights and other illegal activities.”
The Board of Aldermen considered buying the Cadence building for months before Tuesday night’s 5-0 vote to back out of the non-binding agreement with the bank. The decision came after a presentation by Gary Schafer, an architect the city assigned to make an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of what it would cost to remodel the bank to suit security needs of SPD versus renovating the current City Hall building on East Lampkin Street. 
Schafer said the Cadence building, in its current layout, is secure for money, but is not secure as far as the SPD is concerned and would require expensive remodeling—to the tune of $3.4 million on top of the $2.55 million to purchase it—to completely secure the front entrance and add holding cells. Even at that price point, the building, which was made in the late 70s, would still not be up to many of 2015 building codes.
On the other hand, Schafer said the building on Lampkin Street, which was originally built as an armory for the National Guard, could be renovated to police standards as well as meet most modern building codes for a little over $2.4 million.
“It would take just too much money from the taxpayers (to buy the bank),” Nichols said. “It costs $2.5 million to buy that building. For the same 2.5 you can renovate this building. Its a no-brainer.”
At the meeting, Roy Perkins suggested a motion be made to approve the money needed to renovate the current City Hall, but ultimately it was decided more time was needed to make a decision. 
“I think that there are too many finances that we need to get hammered out and polished off and make sure this works,” Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver said in response to Perkin’s suggestion. “I think its a good idea, but I want my constituents to get a chance to read about it in the paper three or four times and get back to me.”