The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State troopers getting body cams
System to be phased in this summer
State Police troopers will soon be wired for sound and video.
Some 800 body-worn cameras will be purchased for state troopers, and the agency plans to begin using them this summer, the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection announced.
“Across the country, state and local police departments are striving to build trust and foster transparency,” the department’s commissioner, Dora Schriro, said in a statement.
DESPP received $895,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice to purchase the cameras. The program will be unveiled in four phases, lasting about two months each.
Troop I in Bethany and Troop H in Hartford will receive 100 Panasonic cameras each by midsummer. All other troopers will have cameras by next spring.
The cameras will be integrated with the agency’s existing dashboard cameras in the troopers’ cruisers.
The cameras come as part of a state law — An Act Concerning Excessive Use of Force — that was passed in a special session of the General Assembly. Other parts of the act include training in bias-free policing and cultural competency and sensitivity. The act also lays out how to store body-camera data.
Troopers will be in good company.
Other Connecticut-based law enforcement agencies have already taken the body camera plunge, including police departments in Milford, Ansonia, Westport, Stratford, Orange, Stamford, Redding, New Haven and Bridgeport.
“Police departments are striving to build trust and foster transparency.”
Dora Schriro, Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection commissioner
In Bridgeport, the officers are currently participating in a pilot program testing two different camera models.
“It gives you such advantage and it’s so transparent . ... It’s a boost for us,” said Bridgeport’s Acting Police Chief Armando Perez at the program’s launch earlier this year. “I want to be as transparent as I can possibly be, and this gives me the opportunity. It builds good relationships with the community.”
Fairfield police did a pilot program with body cameras in 2016, but the department does not currently use them.
Massachusetts State Police announced in April the agency hopes to get body cameras for its officers in the coming months. Spokespeople for New York State Police and Rhode Island State Police said the agencies do not have body cameras.