Police body cameras can help officers and suspects, so why don’t more departments have them?

“You need to say if we do this, this is the commitment we would have to make financially."

• Becky Metrick/PennLive
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  Cops Reporter at PennLive.com

(Harrisburg) — If you’re under the impression that most police agencies in Pennsylvania have body cameras as a part of their arsenal, you’d be wrong.

Police in Pennsylvania are lagging years behind their counterparts across the country in adopting use of body cameras, in large part because they were worried they’d run afoul of the state’s wiretapping law.

Elsewhere in the U.S., body cameras have been in use for nearly a decade. A 2013 Department of Justice study found that one-third of local police departments had cameras by that time. Another study found that 95 percent of the nation’s largest departments were using body cameras, or planning to adopt them, by 2015.

The 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the protests that followed accelerated those efforts, as cameras were seen as a way to increase police accountability and build public trust.

So two years ago, when Gov. Tom Wolf signed a law that enabled police to use the cameras on the job without risking charges for illegal wiretapping or a lawsuit, Pennsylvania was already well behind the curve.

It hasn’t yet caught up.

PennLive surveyed 22 police agencies that serve central Pennsylvania, including state police, and found only three have moved beyond pilot programs to put body cameras into regular use.

Most departments that don’t have cameras say they would like to begin using them but they face several obstacles, not the least of which is cost. They also are moving deliberately to draft policies governing the use of cameras, storage of the resulting video and issues of who can access it.

Around the state, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia both began planning for the use of body cameras before the 2017 law change, and now have cameras in place. Philadelphia just completed its policy last year, while Pittsburgh had outfitted all officers to start 2019, TribLive reported.

York instituted a body camera program for the department that was completed just before the law was changed, YDR reported, and Lancaster started its program last year, according to LancasterOnline.

Scranton, Erie and Harrisburg are all still in the process of acquiring cameras but closing in on the finish line, according to local media reports.

Central Pennsylvania police agencies say they’re eager to put cameras, typically worn on the front of a police officer’s uniform where they can capture interactions between police officers and the public, into use. In the event of a problem, footage can be reviewed to assess the actions of both parties.

“Majority of police officers, when we go on scene, you see cameras recording you from the moment you roll up to any interaction you have with a person,” Harrisburg Deputy Police Chief Deric Moody said. “And that can be doctored, that can be manipulated to be shown in a light to spin the story. [A body camera] levels that playing field. You have a video but we also have a video.”

Added Darrell Rieder, director of public safety for Swatara Township: “I don’t fear this in the least bit. I think that our officers do a great job and have done so for many years. If anything. I see this as an opportunity to show people how professional our police officers are, how dangerous their jobs are, and what a good job they do in handling the situations they’re put in. I look forward to them having that extra layer of protection, to show what they’ve done in a certain situation.”

Pilot program proves valuable

One department that has made progress is Harrisburg. Police Deputy Chief Deric Moody said the department’s 90 to 100 uniformed patrol officers are expected to be the first to get body cameras. He hoped to have them operational by the end of the summer.

One of the biggest concerns was figuring out the technical aspects of bringing cameras to the department, Moody said. The department has done two rounds of pilot programs with various cameras over the past two years. One morning this spring, he spent three or four hours with a vendor who was demonstrating his product before it went into a pilot program.

“In our minds, this has been a partnership. Our IT department has really driven a lot of the technical aspects of it,” Moody said. “We know from a policing standpoint what will make a good fit.”

On the same day in 2017 that Gov. Wolf signed Act 22, he also announced a $52,000 federal grant to allow state police to start a pilot program. The pilot provided body cameras for a small group of troopers during the second half of 2018.

Brent Miller, state police spokesman, said the program provided valuable feedback.

“Users liked having the body cameras,” Miller said. “Troopers generally had no issues following the policy as outlined. There was a learning curve with activating the cameras, which was anticipated and consistent with previous rollouts of new equipment and technology.”

Since the pilot program, Miller said the department is looking to make some “incremental changes” to its interim policy to make it more comprehensive, based off feedback they got from troopers, supervisors and outside stakeholders.

Miller said state police support expanding the use of body cameras, but doesn’t have a timetable for when troopers will get them.

PSP spokesman Ryan Tarkowski added that there are financial hurdles to bringing cameras to the statewide department, and they are exploring funding options.

Cost is a barrier for some departments

University of Pittsburgh professor David Harris said he isn’t surprised by how slowly these programs have been developed, considering the costs.

“[Departments] need to have a very frank public discussion. You need to say if we do this, this is the commitment we would have to make financially,” Harris said.

Departments have a variety of body camera options from which to choose, ranging from familiar names such as Motorola to law enforcement-focused companies such as Watchguard.

They also come with a wide range of price tags, depending on the type of storage that departments want, the camera’s features and upgrades that technological advances will require.

According to information compiled by the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee, individual cameras can cost anywhere from $99 to $1000 per camera, but the bulk of the costs go toward storage systems.

“It’s hard to put a number on it because each vendor has different ongoing cost requirements,” Moody said. Simple things such as replacement batteries have to be factored in, he said, so it’s hard to give exact numbers.

On the high end, companies offer a lot of bells and whistles, Moody said.

But if they don’t also offer built-in replacements and upgrades of equipment, a department risks spending a lot of money on a system that could quickly become obsolete.

And a cheaper system might prove to be more costly in the long term. The cost of storage, equipment repair or upgrades can add up quickly.

“We factor all of that in,” Moody said. “All of [the cameras the department has tested] have been within budget. It’s not always as simple as ‘I’ll take the cheaper one.’”

Departments also have to consider how many officers they must equip with cameras. For Harrisburg, it’s close to 100 to start. For Swatara Township, it’s more like 20.

Federal and state grants are available to help pay for the cameras, and in some cases will help pay for up to half a department’s costs.

Larger departments, such as the state police and Harrisburg police, have some support in place to handle the logistics of a body camera system.

That’s not always the case for smaller departments, and those departments in Dauphin and Cumberland counties have moved more slowly toward getting cameras.

In Swatara Township, part of why its process has been so lengthy is figuring out the funding for an immense amount of storage.

In 2017, the department upgraded its server in anticipation of getting body cameras, Rieder said. He said the old server was at the end of its life, so the timing worked out. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t looking at options to save costs elsewhere.

“We’re talking about taxpayers’ money. No municipality wants to raise taxes, so you have to look for available monies out there, and grants aren’t something that happens overnight,” Reider said. “It’s a complicated process.”

One option is to allow the same company that supplies the cameras to provide storage of the video those cameras produce. But keeping that video footage in a cloud system, which is common practice, could cost more because of the need for added online security.

The department likely will get a minimum of 20 cameras, Reider said. He’s looking to some federal grants to help pay for them, and is anticipating getting cameras in the next two years.

“We try to take advantage of grant money whenever possible to try to ease the burden on the taxpayers while still trying to move our department into the future,” Reider said.

Money is the reason that Hampden Township has decided to hold off on equipping its officers with body cameras.

“The outright purchase isn’t typically the problem, but file storage is,” Chief Steve Junkin said. “Records retention laws and statute of limitations, coupled with how long it takes for some things to go to court, adds to the overall amount of video storage we’d need.

“That cost could be several thousand a year,” he said. “Now take all of that video and add in the time it takes to duplicate it for court, when most of that is already captured on the [in car cameras], and we see an increase in labor costs but a duplication of information.”

For Junkin, the small number of use-of-force complaints against officers isn’t enough to justify the cost of cameras yet. The department will continue to evaluate the need each year, he said.

Derry Township Police Department also has no timetable in mind for getting cameras but has begun the process of trying to find funding, according to Chief Garth Warner. “If a department doesn’t jump on [purchasing body cameras] right away — some of your smaller departments that don’t have very big budgets – it’s not that they don’t want to do it, it’s that they can’t,” he said.