Tumwater police finally are wearing body-worn cameras. What took so long?
The wait is over.
Tumwater, the last major jurisdiction in Thurston County to require police officers to don body-worn cameras, now has them, the City Council learned this week in an update from the acting chief of the police department.
Carlos Quiles said Tumwater was actually the first city in the county to equip police cars with in-car camera systems; however, the body-worn cameras were delayed due to staffing issues and a desire from previous leadership to do things right, The Olympian previously reported.
Quiles said during the Tuesday meeting that the body cameras had already come in handy the same day with a client who spoke Spanish and couldn’t understand or speak English. The Axon equipment now has the capability to translate conversations in real time.
The Tumwater Police Department is now equipped with 49 body-worn cameras, and every vehicle is receiving updated in-car cameras, Quiles said.
Quiles said the city’s body-worn camera project officially started Sept. 4. He and his team quickly began promoting folks to help push the project forward, including an administrative sergeant to oversee the equipment and a records supervisor. The biggest challenge was securing funding, he said.
He said a needs assessment was completed in September, followed by a “due-diligence check” with the cities of Olympia, Lacey and the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office to see how Axon equipment was working for them.
“And the reason why we did that is we wanted to make sure again, that all the big agencies are using Axon as their vendor,” he said. “It was on the state-approved contract list.”
He said with the four main agencies in the county being on the same program, they have commonality in policy, equipment and training.
Quiles said contract discussions with Axon began in November, and a tentative policy was created. Then negotiations with the Tumwater Police Guild ensued to make sure everything was agreeable.
He said final costs were determined in December, and a final agreement with the police guild and Axon was signed in December. The cost of the program for 2025 and 2026 is $1,125,077, according to council documents.
Quiles said the equipment arrived at the end of January, and then it took some time to complete installation and training with Axon representatives. Installation of the new in-car cameras and training began on March 18.
He said as of Tuesday morning, the body-worn camera rollout was complete, with the last of the officers being trained and receiving their equipment this week. He said the city is actually ahead of schedule — the initial timeline was two years, and it only took seven months from the start of the program to implementation.
He said the city will receive brand-new cameras every 30 months as part of their contract with Axon.
“This project of seven months became possible only because of the amount of support it received from the police union, Mayor, the police department and city council,” Quiles said. “If all four of those entities would not have been working so closely together, it would have been drug out for who knows how long.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
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