Danbury police receive body cameras
DANBURY — The city has joined a growing number of police departments that supply body cameras to its officers.
The 115 body cameras have arrived, and next month the vendor will begin training personnel on how to use them, Chief Patrick Ridenhour said. Officers would use them in the field shortly afterward, he said.
Body cameras are among the requirements in the police reform bill the legislature approved over the summer, although Danbury had been working to get them beforehand.
“We will be in compliance with both the letter and the spirit of that legislation ahead of schedule,” Ridenhour told City Council recently.
All departments in the state are required to have body and in-dash cameras by July 1, 2022, but many already have them.
State troopers have had body cameras since 2010, while Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Milford and New Haven also have them. Greenwich approved about $359,000 for 160 devices in September.
Nationwide, 47 percent of law enforcement agencies had these cameras in
2016, the most recent available data from a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Based on trends, that number was predicted to rise to
58 percent by 2018, according to Govtech, a research company.
The cameras cost roughly $174,000, including the first year of maintenance and data storage. Ongoing annual costs will be about $82,000, Ridenhour said. The city approved
$265,000 for the cameras in November 2019, but shortly afterward the department’s tentative agreement with a vendor fell through.
“We kind of had to go back to the drawing board,” Ridenhour said.
This included testing other models, he said. The coronavirus pandemic slowed the process further, he said.
Advocates have pushed for these devices in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014 and most recently after an officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.
A George Mason University study released in March 2019, however, found body cameras had not had a “statistically significant or consistent” effect on police or resident behavior.
The researchers said the devices could be more useful if departments study the situations when they are most beneficial and address how they can be used in police training, management, and internal investigations to have the best long-term impact.
Danbury police are drafting a policy on when to use the cameras that will meet best practices and the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council, Ridenhour said.
“At minimum it will govern how the camera is used, where it is placed on the uniform, when personnel are required to use them, and consequences for misuse or other violations of the policy,” he said. “Generally, most interactions between our officers in the field and the public will have to be recorded. We will do our best to define exceptions and establish a procedure for clearly documenting the reasons when an encounter is not recorded.”
The department already has in-dash cameras, but plans to upgrade those. That funding has already been approved. In-dash cameras are also required under the new law.
“They’ve been around for at least a decade,” Ridenhour said. “They’re failing and the company that was originally used is no longer in business, so they’re not serviceable anymore. They’re really past their usefulness.”
The plan is for the indash and body cameras to interact and “talk” to each other, he said.
“We’re going to have hopefully a pretty seamless system,” Ridenhour said.