Body Cam Plan OK’d; Patience Counseled

As New Haven police won approval for a plan to outfit all 450-plus officers with body cameras, a neighboring town’s chief advised the department to give officers some time to adjust to the new way of policing.

The Board of Alders Monday unanimously approved a resolution that allows the police to submit an application to the state’s Office of Policy & Management for the cost of purchasing the cameras.

The department has decided to purchase the Axon (formerly Taser International) version of the camera, which allows for the recording strictly of what the officer can see, but not more. (Read more about the camera model the department chose here.)

Lt. Racheal Cain, who along with Sgt. Rose Dell has led the department’s pilot program, said the department will order the cameras by June 30 to to make the state’s deadline for 100 percent reimbursement. The cost for the cameras and accompanying cloud storage system, originally projected to hit $1.5 million, probably won’t exceed $700,000, Cain said.

Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes, a retired police captain who chairs the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee, said that costs have dropped in recent years as body cam technology has evolved.

“They wanted to project high [in the original $1.5 million estimate] because it’s something relatively new out and they weren’t sure what the price would be,” Antunes said of the reduced costs. ​“So rather than lowering it at the beginning, they projected high and lowered it, instead of it being that’s all we’re getting and it’s not enough.”

Departments throughout the country have started using body cams in response to controversies involving police misconduct, as a way of helping to document what really happens on the street.

FOI Backlogs

Other departments that have deployed body cameras have encountered problems dealing with Freedom of Information requests from the public, the press, and attorneys. Reviewing and redacting sensitive video footage can be time-consuming and demanding on resources, requiring specifically someone who can review the footage. (This story details problems encountered in Seattle.)

Hamden Police Chief Tom Wydra and his 109 officers have been wearing body cameras for the past four years. He said in an interview Monday that FOI requests for footage come from people of all walks of life including the press, attorneys, and even law students. The department treats the request for body camera footage just as it would a printed report, he said

Wydra said there are times when the department can release video footage that is unredacted, or it can use technology to pixelate the face of a victim or a juvenile. Sometimes the audio has to be redacted too.

“It’s definitely more time consuming than a traditional FOI request,” he said.

The Hamden police department hasn’t had to add any more staff to handle the request, Wydra said. Instead he has shifted the roles of some existing staff and used the training division for additional support. Hamden also is using the Axon body camera, and Wydra said that redaction software that accompanies that mode has been a big help.

He said if the department falls behind on answering FOI requests, it’s usually a few days, not months.

“We have talked to some in other departments and they’re months behind,” he said. ​“We pay very close attention to meeting the needs of folks asking whether it’s the court, the media or the public.”

Lt. Cain said New Haven police, like Hamden, plan to follow the FOI laws and treat video footage the same as all records requests. But because of the size of the department, it will likely need between one and four new people on staff to manage such requests and data generally.

“There have also been improvements in software that’s used for redaction,” Sgt. Dell added. ​“As that continues to improve it’s going to cut down on the actual time it takes to redact.”

Prior Views

Some police departments have had to grapple with whether to allow officers to review their footage before writing their reports, particularly in cases of alleged use of excessive force. Connecticut’s legislature has taken that question off the table.

Arguments supporting review suggest that it allows for more accurate reporting by the officer; arguments against suggest that officers might be more inclined to align their story with the video.

State law in Connecticut provides a model policy, which departments are required to follow, and gives the officer the opportunity to review the footage prior to writing reports and prior to any meeting with internal affairs, both Cain and Wydra confirmed. Dell said officers also will have access to an app that allows instant replay of footage.

Wydra said that the benefit of that is for the same reason that a department establishes a body camera program in the first place: transparency and accuracy.

Break-In Period

Wydra’s big tip to a department like New Haven embarking on a body camera: Give officers a few months to get used to rules for using the cameras before coming down on them for mistakes.

“We needed to allow a break-in period to allow officers to get familiar with when to put the camera on,” he said. ​“It doesn’t happen overnight.”

He said in the first few months of Hamden’s program there were definitely instances when officers simply forgot to turn their camera on because, he said, they’re human. They forget stuff. That was OK in the early months. Four years later, forgetting is not an acceptable excuse.

“You got to give them a break-in period because this is completely new and they need time to learn and remember to use the cameras,” he said. But four years later, ​“we know that there are [citizen] complaints that would have come to us that did not once we had body cameras. We also have uncovered certain incidents where the officer didn’t do exactly the right thing. It’s a double edge sword but we’re still proud of it.”

Cain said the details of the department’s general order on body cameras are still being worked out with the union, but the plan is to roll out the departments cameras in phases.

“It’s really not practical that we roll out 455 cameras all within the same period of time,” she said. ​“We know that there’s going to be a learning curve. The policy we’re writing will give them a little bit of leniency if an officer forgets to turn on their camera.

“They’re going to have to document that they forgot to turn on the camera although there will be —and we can’t say this is positive because we’re still in the process of writing the general order — but possibly a 90-day grace period if they forget. There will be leniency.”

Alder Antunes said he believes that the cameras will help make policing more transparent, particularly as a new civilian review board gets up and running again. If Antunes has any concerns, the retired cop said that it’s that the officer might be more timid in doing their jobs. He said the officer’s awareness of the camera likely necessitates a pause or a step back, but then again, it also can cause the public to do the same thing.

“I don’t want the officer to be timid and not do the job,” he said. ​“I don’t want the camera to deter the officer doing his or her job.”