First 50 cops set to get them – but suit looms

LIGHTS, BODY cameras — legal action?

The NYPD’s long-anticipated plan to outfit its force with video recorders is set for rollout this month, although police unions and critics are trying to put a stop to it.

Some 50 officers working the 4 p.m.-midnight shift in Manhattan’s 34th Precinct are due to add Vievu body cams to their standard uniform later this month.

The wired precinct’s performance will be compared with a camera-free precinct of similar size and demographics to determine the impact of the program.

“We have hit the point where we really can’t learn anymore by reading and talking,” said Assistant Commissioner Nancy Hoppock of the NYPD’s risk management bureau. “We have to do it. We have to flip the switch.”

By the end of autumn, the department hopes 1,000 officers in 20 precincts will use the cameras. But there are possible problems looming for the program, where only cops with the rank of officer will wear cameras.

The unions representing detectives, lieutenants and captains, and deputy inspectors say their input was never sought by police brass.

Yet they are expected to supervise the officers wearing the cameras and help implement and run the program, the higher-ranking cops griped.

The three unions plan to go to court to ask for a temporary restraining order blocking the debut of the cameras.

This “is both untimely and ignores the tremendous sacrifice and change in working condition for every other uniformed member of the service of all ranks,” the three unions said in a joint statement Friday.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, representing cops with the rank of officer, consulted with the NYPD brass on the guidelines and had no comment Friday.

“In bargaining with the PBA, the city drastically changed the conditions of employment for detectives, lieutenants, and captains without us having either a say or a seat at that table. We demand to bargain over it,” Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association and Louis Turco, president of the Lieutenants’ Benevolent Association said in a joint statement.

NYPD Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo of the risk management bureau said the dynamics of a street stop or witness interview would determine when cameras are used.

A potential witness in a burglary, for instance, would remain off camera. But if the witness says something that leads police to believe he is a suspect, the officer would be allowed to turn the camera on.

“We’re very cognizant of the concern about people’s privacy,” Pontillo said. “We don’t want to deter people from cooperating. But we still want to capture the events where we’re focusing on the person we’re approaching as a suspect.”

The guidelines for police use of the cameras were laid out Friday in an eight-page internal memo. They still need approval from Peter Zimroth — the federal monitor appointed after a 2013 ruling that the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy targeted minorities and was unconstitutional.

Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer Darius Charney complained the guidelines fail to reflect enough of the public input gathered about the initiative.

“We also have concerns with the substance of the policy,” Charney said in a statement. “We plan to raise those concerns with the court in the coming weeks.”

While formulating its guidelines, the NYPD issued a questionnaire answered by more than 5,000 cops and about 25,000 citizens.

There was more agreement than expected, but not on notification — and not enough for Charney, whose group brought the stop and frisk lawsuit.

The proposed guidelines mandate that cops announce to anyone they question or confront that they are being recorded — unless the revelation might put an investigation or an individual at risk.