Digital cameras forum: Camera for Police Department

standards and recommendations inside your county or state police organisation? Or some centralised purchase department?

Can you check with colleagues in other places what they use. No better recommendation than from practice.

Kees

As a retired police officer, working the crime scene unit, our department only uses digital cameras for non-critical photos.
Some courts will not allow digital photos to be admissible as evidence, since there is a great possiblility for the image to be edited with a software program. This could cause the image to be slanted to or from the defendant.

When you say "used by officers", that makes me think that some of these officers may not be proficient with a camera.

I really would not want to give a $1,500 camera to someone without some knowledge of photography.

I would assume some possibility of loss or damage may also be involved.

I would approach this as an experiment.
Get two reasonably priced cameras that can function as point-and-shoot and also has manual controls.
Something like the Canon A610, A620, A630, or A640.
They sell for under $300.

This line of cameras has a very sharp lens and should cover most situations you encounter.

Those cameras will be flexible enough for an intermediate to advanced photographer or someone with little or no knowledge of photography.

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It's way out of the price range, but worth mentioning for a LE aplication is the "new" Nikon D2XS. What makes it so great is that it's integrally designed to support secure image authentication, which is a must for the LE enviroment, allowing the chain of custody for the images to be authenticated and verified, and providing very good proof that the images have not been edited, allowing images to be used as court evidence.

However, for your purposes, it's not practical, just owing to the fact that it lists for about ten times (!) what you're talking about spending. However, I believe Nikon does offer PD pricing and sponsorships, so contacting them might be worth a shot. (No pun intended.) The problem with the less expensive digitals is that the authentication systems aren't there, and, also, that they're often less than ideal for shooting in a low-light situation, which could be common for a crime scene, and also that they're not great when it comes to shooting close-up, i.e. "damage" on victims, etc.