The connecticut department of emergency services and public protection, division of state police, utilizes bwcs to accomplish several objectives, to include accurate documentation of critical…

This federal Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (CFDA 16.835 - Body Worn Camera Policy and Implementation) provides $927,000.00 in funding to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, Division of State Police, to expand their body-worn camera (BWC) program. The grant will support the acquisition of 200 additional BWCs and associated data storage and redaction capabilities to enhance transparency, accountability, and effectiveness of law enforcement operations across the state. Key objectives include improving the documentation of critical incidents, police-public interactions, and officer performance, as well as facilitating the sharing of BWC footage with prosecutors. The grant will be implemented over a 3-year period from October 2023 to September 2026.

The connecticut department of emergency services and public protection, division of state police, utilizes bwcs to accomplish several objectives, to include accurate documentation of critical incidents, police-public contacts, crime and accident scenes, arrests, preserving visual and audio information for use with investigations in accordance with applicable agency guidelines. Capturing crimes in-progress, whether committed against the trooper and/or police officer or the community, documenting police response to an incident, aiding in the documentation of victim, witness or suspect statements pursuant to an on-scene response and/or documentation of the advisement of rights and to counteract false complaints made against a trooper and/or police officer in the course and scope of his or her official police duties and to assist in the consideration of appropriate action in response to such an event. In accordance with connecticut law and state police policy, each trooper is currently issued and utilizing a BWC. The connecticut state police began testing and evaluating bwcs in 2015, with a deployment in 2016, achieving an approximate 70 percent implementation across the agency. While most troopers on patrol have a high degree of use, further education and technological improvements are needed to achieve 100 percent compliance. This proposal is to support new BWC implementation which includes an expansion of our current program, incorporating 200 troopers to be hired over the course of the next three fiscal years. The new program is expected to include the requisite hardware to meet our staffing numbers, including technological upgrades in storage and specifically redaction. The current GAP in our redaction capability dissipates efficiency in producing required or requested data thereby eroding transparency, atrophying service, and creating backlogs. The new program focuses on enhancing transparency, accountability, and effectiveness through improvements in technology, storage, and swifter redaction. This bolsters our ability to provide the states attorney with BWC footage for arrests and makes IT easier for our troopers to manage BWC evidence. The purpose of equipping troopers and police officers with body-worn cameras is to assist in strengthening transparency by documenting incidents and encounters between officers and the public, resolving officer-involved incidents and complaints by providing an objectively independent record of events, improving community relations by allowing the public to see video evidence of police activities and encounters in accordance with applicable laws regarding public disclosure, and identifying and strengthening officer performance by using footage for officer training and monitoring when appropriate and consistent with the law.