Body cameras have gained increasing popularity ever since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., an incident that was not captured on video and where eyewitness accounts differed.
That incident and other high-profile cases have led to disbursement of millions of dollars in federal money to states to buy the cameras. Connecticut State Police now have them, as well as a smattering of municipal police departments in the region: Norwich, Groton Town and Mashantucket. New London is poised to sign a contract and expects to be equipped before year’s end. Cameras are also on the horizon in Waterford.
Some believe the cameras are a way to keep police honest. Police say, however, that studies have shown one of the outcomes is fewer civilian complaints, since videos take some of the guesswork out of sorting out what really happened at the scene of an arrest or traffic stop. Police also increasingly cite the cameras as a way to gain perspective when an incident is captured on cellphone videos, ubiquitous these days. Representatives from the departments contacted for this report are quick to point out that the officers' actions in the death of George Floyd are indefensible.
Despite what appears to be universal agreement about their value, some departments have cited financial constraints in delaying the institution of a body camera program, not just because of the cost of the cameras but the technological requirements surrounding them. The legislature’s extension of a grant program to aid municipal departments with the start-up cost earlier this year has apparently not helped ease those concerns.
Videos are subject to Freedom of Information requests and used as evidence in court cases, and police must have the ability to not only store and share but redact the videos, such as blurring faces of bystanders or crime victims.
Ledyard police Chief John Rich, who assisted the Madison Police Department in acquiring cameras when he led that department, brought a proposal to the town in 2017. It was rejected, but he made use of the available state funding to instead equip police vehicles with cameras.
Rich, an advocate of body cameras, said there was a lot of discussion surrounding the devices, especially the manpower hours involved in storing the video and making it readily available upon request to both the public and the court system. He expects continued discussion, and ultimately, he said, he thinks cameras will “affirm the professionalism of our officers.”
Stonington likewise failed to obtain funding during the current budget cycle. Stonington police Capt. Todd Olson said the department has looked at funding the purchase of both body cameras and in-car cameras. It has neither.
He said the department recently upgraded its radio system at a cost of more than $1 million and understands that the town is in a difficult situation this year, considering the unknown costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Olson said he wants to ensure the town is properly situated to cope with associated information technology costs and storage. He said worse than not having the cameras is having a system that is not properly equipped to handle everything that goes along with the devices.
“That is manpower-intensive ... another challenge we want to make sure we’re ready for it,” Olson said.
East Lyme police Chief Mike Finkelstein said this week that while his 25-officer police force has dashboard cameras, it does not have body cameras. He said he presented a plan to the town to purchase body cameras two years ago, but the idea was turned down due high costs and because there was no guarantee the state would reimburse the purchase.
Finkelstein said his town, like other municipalities, also would need to expand its IT infrastructure to support the vast amount of data and video memory that would need to be saved and stored to adequately follow state Freedom of Information Act laws. He said the town would need to pay for that additional video data storage, either by way of a cloud or on physical servers, as well as purchase redaction software.
An additional IT employee also likely would be needed, as is the case in New London.
“We are woefully inadequate on the IT side, and purchasing these cameras creates a need for IT,” Finkelstein said by phone last week. He added that he was and always has been in favor of purchasing body cameras for his officers.
“We will definitely be revisiting the idea,” he said.
Technology upgrades were one of the many obstacles faced by New London, which took five years of preparation for the signing of a $1.2 million contract with Axon for not only body cameras, but in-car cameras, stun guns, cloud storage and upgrades and replacement equipment. Still, the town plans to hire a dedicated IT employee to help manage the system, along with an updated computer-aided dispatch system.
Axon is the same company used by state police and Groton Town police.
Groton Town police Chief L.J. Fusaro said he thinks the use of body cameras by all departments is inevitable and, from his point of view, a welcome tool. His department started using them in 2017. He said his sense is the number of civilian complaints has gone down, and even when a complaint is lodged against an officer, video more often than not serves to disprove allegations of officer misconduct.
“Certain allegations are made and there have been times we went back and reviewed (the video) and it is clearly not what happened. We offer for them to take a look,” Fusaro said. “If there were shortcomings or malfeasance, we deal with that. But thankfully we haven’t encountered that.”
New London NAACP President Jean Jordan became involved in one such complaint against Groton Town police and asked to review video footage of an incident, presented to her as inappropriate conduct by an officers and perhaps a case of racial profiling.
Both Jordan and Fusaro agreed that the encounter was not quite as presented by family members of the alleged victim, who was cited with possession of marijuana.
Fusaro said the use of cameras was not initially universally accepted.
“Who wants something on them recording everything they do?” he said.
But as the cameras have become more of the norm, he expects officers, the ones coming out of the academy, will have never gone on patrol without them.
State records show four local police departments have made use of the state grant program since 2017: Groton Town received $98,998; Ledyard, $83,155; Norwich, $146,652, and Old Saybrook, $56,639.
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