The Essex Police Department recently acquired body-worn cameras (BWCs) as a new tool for police work and to comply with state law. The State of Connecticut passed a bill in October 2021 that requires all police departments in the state to have both BWCs and in-car dashboard cameras on July 1 of this year.

“As soon as the bill passed, I jumped right on it, and started reaching out to vendors, and starting trying to figure out the process,” Essex Resident State Trooper Mark Roberts said.

Roberts, who has been the resident trooper since October 2019, said that Essex has been ahead of the curve by having dashboard cameras an established part of the police department prior to the passage of bill by state requiring BWCs be worn by officers.

“Essex made a decision years ago to mirror everything the state police is doing as far as their infrastructure in their vehicles, so it was a very seamless transition when, fast forward, we have to add in body cameras,” Roberts said.

The department recently began using BWCs, while in-car platform cameras were a part of the department before the state passed its bill. The latter kind of camera that had been used was a Panasonic Arbitrator system, which will continue to be used alongside the same model for BWCs, according to Roberts.

“The reason that’s important is that the two devices communicate with one another. For example, you don’t want to mix your body-cam vendor with your in-car video vendor,” he said. “The communication wouldn’t be there between the two platforms, and you’d need to have two separate computer and server systems, and it would just be a mess.”

The consistency in technology would also allow for the addition of interoperability between the police department in Essex and Connecticut State Police servers, according to Roberts.

As part of the new state law, the town department found itself needing to simultaneously update its in-car technology and cameras system with the process of acquiring BWCs, including updating car modems to adapt to a 4G system for better communication and exchange of information.

“It was kind of an all-encompassing kind of endeavor,” said Roberts.

That all-encompassing process amounts to a total cost of more than $42,000, considering aspects such as the costs of the technology to be used, the labor required for installation, software updates, and charging stations for downloading video into the statewide network.

“We ended up going with the latest and greatest body camera, even newer than what the State Police is currently using, but what they are going to use,” he said. “It’s the brand new version of the Arbitrator body cameras, the BWC4000. Those each are right around $825 a camera. The licensing is $675 a camera, [plus] $360 for their protection plan. So you can quickly see how they add up.”

The BWC4000 models have a 12-hour battery life and capture video at a high-quality 1080P/720P level, with the addition of four microphones for advanced noise reduction and GPS. This model can be used in unison with the in-car Arbitrator camera, and promise a reliable method of capturing synced audio and visual evidence in nearly any kind of natural condition.

“The mapping software is pretty incredible on the back-end. You start a video on 1 Main Street, and you’re driving down and you go to 42 Main Street. The cameras will show on a GPS map later on exactly where that camera was recording and at what time. You can sync the in-car camera with the body-worn camera footage, and have an all-encompassing view of, ‘This camera was in this location at this time recording, and this is what is captured.’”

Roberts said the benefits of these technological updates are not just to provide video for public knowledge, such as when specific incident footage is requested by the public, but also for internal standards such as accountability and veracity with regards to evidence.

Given Essex’s department structure, with constables reporting to the resident state trooper, all information captured on cameras will be stored on state police servers, as had been the case with the formerly used mobile cameras by the department. Essex was one of the first 10 towns in the state to use that practice.

The evidentiary side is of course one of the main benefits of using this type of technology, as even though Roberts has said the police department has not received a single serious complaint about conduct in years, he understands that cameras provide for the necessary veracity when it comes to potential incidents, and can not only be another way to improve police work, but provide transparency for the public about certain incidents.

Overall, Roberts sees absolutely no negatives when it comes to BWCs and in-car platform cameras.

“We were fortunate that we made a decision early on and then ran in one direction, because it made fiscal and interoperability sense for us, as a resident state trooper town working with the state police,” he said. “There are all positive changes here, there are no negatives with body cams. You’re going to see exactly what I see every day, which is the professionalism of the guys and gals who are working for me.”