Allan Appel Photo
Next time Officer Carlos Colon pulls you over for running a stop sign or talking on your cellphone, be especially polite: You may be on video.
For the last month Colon (pictured) by day and Officer Craig Miller by night have been piloting an in-car camera recording system called the Arbitrator 360 in one patrol car cruising Fair Haven. During that time they made about 70 stops and the system worked well, recording all the action in word and deed occurring within a 180 degree arc around the cruiser at each stop.
New Haven’s police department is getting ready to install the cameras in 13 of its vehicles this month.
Colon and Lt. Robert Muller, the department’s technology coordinator, pronounced it a success.
The system features a touch screen. The in-camera recording is viewable in real time on a screen right on the main mobile data terminal (the MDT) in each of the vehicles.
“It’s great. When we record, it’s all there. If we do something wrong or they [citizens] do, it’s got to be there [on the digital record],” said Colon
Click on the play arrow to watch one of Colon’s video-ed stops at Grand and Ferry in Fair Haven.
“There’s always a suspicion of law enforcement. This [the in-car cameras] allows everyone to know,” said Muller. The system comes online as the department has also put into place a new policy reminding officers not to interfere with (or arrest) citizens for video-recording them in action in public.
The Arbitrator 360 hard drive goes on as soon as the ignition does, but the recording of a scene is activated either by the officer’s turning on the emergency lights, by a touch on the screen, or by turning on his microphone.
The technology is set up, Muller explained, so that the officers can only record. They don’t have access to change or edit the record, which is digitally stored in a durable, heat resistant hard drive unit in the trunk. Access to that drive is restricted to authorized higher ups, who open it with a key.
The recording system “eliminates ‘your word against my word’” before a judge, said Muller.
The system includes three cameras per car, two to be mounted at the top of the rear side windows and the front camera just to right of the rear view mirror. A hard drive in the trunk is constantly on and has room for four memory cards, each recording up to 17 hours of tape.
The camera on the pilot vehicle has been on the outside. Colon said that during the pilot phase, he noticed the snow and ice interfered with quality of recording, so the department installation will be inside, protruding through the rear side window glass.
A microphone on the officer’s belt picks up good-quality sound within 500 feet. Colon figured out a way to improve that sound during the piloting of the technology.
That means he can be in a house responding to a domestic dispute, Colon said. As long as the car is parked outside, the microphone will pick it all up and record, although no video images will be available of interiors.
The equipment, software and a dedicated server cost about $90,000 complete and are being paid for by a grant from the federal Department of Justice.
News of the deployment of first 13 systems was announced by Chief Limon (pictured with Assistant Chief Tobin Hensgen, who’s in charge of technology) at a meeting with crime-beleaguered residents of Newhallville last Wednesday night. He called the system one of the steps the department is taking to assure citizens of greater police accountability.
Limon said the first 13 will be installed in new police vehicles, the idea being that the whole fleet eventually will have the system, money permitting.
All sworn officers will be trained on the equipment, Muller said.
While the main use is for traffic stops, Limon added that “If you pull up to a big disturbance in … like downtown, it will have the capacity to give us evidence.”
Still in process is the erection of a system of access points (APs) that will automatically take up and transfer the recorded info from the cruiser to a dedicated server at police headquarters.
Interior “AP” at Police Headquarters
Eventually there will be APs at every police substation and around the city to enable officers to work with not only information from these recordings but other technology. “There’s not much at the substations now,” said Colon.
The training and policies regarding the equipment will be overseen by a board, said Muller. They are still being formalized.
One pending question: Should an officer identify to a stopped driver that he or she is being recorded?
Muller said state law requires that only one of two people know that a recording is taking place. Colon said that of all the stops he made during the pilot phase, he indicated to a stopped driver that he was being recorded only once.
The effect? “He became less belligerent,” said Colon.
If you want to know, all you have to do is look at the cruiser behind you. If you see a steady red light aimed at you from beside the rear view mirror, then smile.