Yarmouth police look to move forward with body-worn cameras technology
Yarmouth Police Chief Frank Frederickson hoped body-worn camera technology would be “up and running” by September.
But because Massachusetts mandates a town vote for system leases going beyond three years, body-worn cameras won’t find focus in the town until 2022.
“We anticipated that we would be using them by now,” Frederickson said. “But as we entered into the procurement process, we found that it was more affordable to engage in a five- to 10-year contract, and that requires a vote at town meeting.”
Yarmouth voters approved $50,516 at its May 18 town meeting to outfit two full shifts of Yarmouth police officers with body-worn cameras at a time for one year. Another vote is set for Tuesday at special town meeting for the new camera systems program to move forward, said Bob Whritenour, Yarmouth town administrator.
“The article will allow police technology to be leased for a period of up to 10 years,” Whritenour said. “Currently, under the state law, we are only allowed to finance that type of project for up to three years, unless the town adopts a longer standard.”
Frederickson is expecting a favorable outcome at town meeting but said that nothing about the camera systems “will be set in stone” until after the town meeting vote. The unforeseen delay will push paperwork and officer training into the next year, he said.
If approved, Yarmouth would be the second town police department on the Cape using body-worn cameras. The Mashpee Police Department started its body camera pilot program in December 2020.
Dashboard-mounted cameras, which will be linked to body-worn technology, will also need to be installed in every Yarmouth police cruiser, which pushes the timeline back even further, Frederickson said.
“I would love to tell you it will take two weeks but that is not going to be the case,” he said. “It could take four months before we have everything installed and running at 100%.”
Pay-as-you-go for Yarmouth police
With the town meeting vote pending, Deputy Chief Kevin Lennon is using the extra time to research technological bundles and packages through potential provider WatchGuard Technologies, which provides mobile video solutions for law enforcement. The “Body Camera-as-a-Service program” provides a pay-as-you-go option for law enforcement agencies looking to begin an “all-inclusive body-worn program,” Lennon said.
“You can buy cameras outright and own them or do a service plan that gives you the camera, mounting system and unlimited access to the communications central program with off premises storage,” Lennon said. “We are opting for the pay-as-you go service plan.”
Andres Lacambra, senior director for Mobile Video and Motorola Solutions, said that WatchGuard, which was acquired by Motorola Solutions in 2019, offers body-worn camera programs built from an understanding of challenges associated with being a police officer. Because the wireless in-car system is connected to the cameras and the dispatch radio, for example, wearable cameras begin recording as soon as an officer is dispatched to an incident, and the cruiser siren and lights are activated.
“Officers often have to think about a lot of things at the same time whenever they find themselves in front of an incident,” he said. “We try to make it as simple as possible, so officers have as much time to focus on a mission and not worry about technology. At the same time, they can avoid getting into situations where they forget to capture something that is important.”
The off-site computer storage, which Lacambra said is a cloud-based system — “kind of like iTunes is for music” — that transfers the video collected, or “original evidence,” from an officer’s shift to an evidence management system. A record of what happened at any given time is documented: when it was uploaded, who has seen it and whetherit’s been edited, exported or compromised.
“That solution provides the agency with the means to organize all videos. They have the ability to manage content and classify it based on different types of incidents,” Lacambra said. “It also provides tools for officers to redact and share evidence with the judicial system — share it with prosecutors.”
Much of the technology will remain consistent and “pretty straight forward” across police platforms, Lacambra said, but it’s the actual “procedures and policies” such as privacy, warrants and length of data collection, that will differ from state to state.
“There are all of the procedures and policy dealing with content that the agency needs to put in place,” he said. “That is in each police department’s hands.”
To tackle policies associated with the new technology, an internal committee composed of Lennon and six to eight Yarmouth officers convened twice in the last six months to hammer out procedures governing the use of police body-worn cameras, including when they must be turned on, when video can be viewed and by whom, and how long videos are stored in the cloud. By largely modeling Yarmouth policies after Massachusetts State Police guidelines, and conferring with the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office, Lennon said Yarmouth procedures “are 85% done.”
“A lot of the language between policies is extremely similar so we need to tweak certain things to fit Yarmouth based on our chief, command staff and the union,” Lennon said. “The policy is a work in progress, but we should have a final stamp of approval by December.”
Policies will also depend on evolving legislation on body-worn technology, as well as the police reform bill signed by Gov. Charlie Baker in December 2020. The state law, spurred by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 when he was restrained by Minneapolis police, , creates a standardized licensing and training process for police accountability and transparency.
As laws grow and change on evolving law enforcement technology, Frederickson said, there “will be much more to come.”
“It’s an evolving area,” he said. “I think as time goes on there will be more guidelines and policies. Gray areas will become clear one way or another.”
Mashpee police keep the cameras rolling
As Yarmouth police press pause on body-worn cameras until after the town meeting vote, wearable camera technology for the Mashpee Police Department’s pilot program will be extended into June 2022, Police Chief Scott Carline said. By lengthening the program, he said the state can “further advise on future mandates for body-worn cameras under the new reform law.”
“I’d like to get all the information I can from what the state is looking at before we implement any policies,” Carline said. “Regardless, we are receiving constant positive feedback from the officers involved and I couldn’t be happier in the direction this program has gone.”
The pilot program, which was initially slated to run for one year has “gone so well,” Carline said, that Mashpee police bought two additional wearable devices, bringing the total to five body-worn cameras that are shared by officers.
“For training purposes, we monitor the cameras every day and the evidence these bring are extremely eye opening,” Carline said. “It’s one thing to read a report and get a picture of what happened, versus actually seeing what happened on video. It’s brought a much higher level of professionalism to our overall patrol operations.”
For Frederickson, the success that police agencies like Mashpee has enjoyed using wearable technology has further demonstrated that body-worn cameras will help Yarmouth police “build credibility within the community.”
“We want to make sure our community is being protected in a way they think they should be,” he said. “Hopefully the evidence will show a tremendous amount of professionalism is taking place. There are many reports that say otherwise but we are confident this will be a positive addition to the department.”
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