The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Police use of body cams gains ground across CT
Following widespread calls for police reform this summer, an initiative from advocates and lawmakers at the state and local level to require officers in Connecticut to wear body cameras is gaining momentum.
Digital technology has been transforming law enforcement for the past two decades, and body cameras have become the latest tool in an effort to restore trust in law enforcement.
“It’s an important part of 21st-century policing,” said Greenwich Police Chief James Heavey, who met with representatives of a leading body-camera and technology company last week to review plans to purchase the equipment for Greenwich officers.
Body cameras for officers became prevalent following several high-profile police shootings, including the 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2015, the administration of President Barack Obama distributed more than $23 million in federal grants to help law enforcement agencies acquire the devices. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, by 2016, nearly half of U.S.
law enforcement agencies had officers equipped in whole or in part with body-worn cameras.
The aim, say law-enforcement leaders, is for the devices to reduce civil lawsuits against the police and to minimize the number of complaints targeted at officers, by providing a record of interactions with the public.
Discussions about requiring all of the state’s police departments to outfit their officers with body cameras have been held in Hartford. In a wide-ranging bill on police reforms passed last week by the state House of Representatives, the use of body and dash cameras would be mandated for all municipal and state cops. The bill moves to the state Senate this week for a vote.
Milford began equipping officers with body cameras in 2011, an early adapter among cities in the region.
New Haven began rolling out body cameras in late 2017, with an initial outlay of $779,000 for the first year. Norwalk police entered into a five-year-contract in January of 2018. Stamford and Bridgeport began equipping all officers with the cameras in March of 2018.
“These cameras will help support the police in the way of transparency and give the community solid proof of what transpires during incidents. Increased transparency is good for the people of Bridgeport and our public safety officers,” said state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, about state funding for the devices.
The city of Danbury is still testing cameras and working out the process for acquiring the devices, as is the town of Greenwich. Some smaller departments in the region, like New Milford, have also not yet acquired cameras.
Some departments have put off the acquisition of cameras due to cost.
State Troopers have all been issued body cameras since the start of 2020, said Brian Foley, spokesman for Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, in a process that began in late 2019, at an initial cost of $7 million. The state has a contract with Panasonic for the cameras, which will also be deployed to specialty units in future. “The more cameras the better. The more transparency, the better,” he said.
The cameras have overcome initial resistance in the law enforcement community.
“It’s truly amazing how far we’ve come, for the good, actually,” said Lisa Dadio, a former New Haven police lieutenant who is now a lecturer at the University of New Haven. Dadio left front-line policing when video cameras were beginning to be installed in police cruisers, and new technology has unleashed a torrent of new devices and tools for police, for the betterment of police and the public, she said.
“What cameras do is a couple of things – it creates transparency, it documents exchanges between law enforcement and community. It’s no longer my word versus yours. To me that’s a good thing. And it can be used as a training tool,” she said.
The cameras can highlight police misconduct — as well as disprove false claims of police misconduct. “The whole point is to have both . The goal is to have the positive outweigh the negative. And it’s the old adage – if you don’t have anything to hide, what do you have to worry about?” said the University of New Haven instructor.
While body cameras have been in operation since the early 2000s, a new generation of technology has made them smaller, more rugged, more secure and flexible to operate. The latest cameras have a battery life of more than 12 hours, said Matthew Karsten, an engineer with Axon Enterprise, a company that sells body cameras and other law enforcement technology.
Karsten, briefing Greenwich police supervisors and the town’s finance board in a teleconference, said the latest cameras can be activated in a variety of ways. An officer can turn them on and off. A department can also add other settings: cameras can be automatically turned on when a squad car door is opened, when the siren is engaged, or when a weapon is drawn from a holster. The camera can also be activated when a gun is fired.
The overall goal, according to the Axon engineer, is to “capture more truth.” While the cameras have documented instances of misconduct or poor performance, Karsten said, in departments they have worked with, “The vast majority of the time, it’s a positive for the department, rather than a negative.”
There are indeed penalties that may follow from unprofessional conduct captured on tape. The Norwalk Police Department, for instance, stipulates in its new rulebook on cameras that cases of “minor misconduct” can result in additional training, a negative evaluation or career counseling. “Examples of minor misconduct include but are not limited to uniform violations, rudeness, and profanity,” the guidelines state, while use of slurs or other derogatory comments are “not considered minor misconduct.”
Besides acquiring the cameras themselves, police departments and their financial overseers need to enact a range of administrative, monetary, technical and personnel duties before the cameras go live. Departments need to decide on how much storage capacity they want, which can be a substantial cost. They have to incorporate privacy measures into the guidelines for use. Personnel have to be assigned to monitor and review the camera footage, as well as be trained on how to edit the material. The process can be a laborious one, and departments like Greenwich and Danbury have been working through the testing and pre-implementation phase for years.
How well the cameras have performed in improving accountability and minimizing misconduct is still open for interpretation, according to law enforcement observers. Some studies, like a 2017 study by the National Institute of Justice, found a reduction in use-of-force reports and complaints from citizens in departments where cameras were deployed. But a report by the George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, which reviewed other studies through June 2018, found the cameras did not have a statistically significant impact on most measures of officer behavior, citizen behavior or public attitudes toward police. Dadio, the University of New Haven educator, said it appears to be too soon to tell what impact the cameras are having out on the streets.
But given the current climate and the ongoing debate about accountability, police body cameras will likely be coming to streets in almost every community in the region. “This kind of tool is incredibly prevalent,” Dadio said.