"You would have to contact the individual agencies," Amie Ledoux, administrative assistant at the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, said when asked if there is a list of departments not in compliance.
The Connecticut Police Chiefs Association had a similar response: "We don't keep track of that here."
Part of the Police Accountability Act passed in 2020, the law required the cameras by July 1, 2022. But Marc Pelka, undersecretary of Criminal Justice Policy and Planning at the Office of Policy and Management, said no agency is assigned by statute to monitor the state's more than 100 police departments for compliance.
One way to get a sense of which departments are making an effort to comply is to review the state's list of municipalities that have received funding for cameras.
However, the fact a municipality received a grant doesn't mean it is fully complying with the law. Even those that received partial reimbursement for body-worn cameras may not be in full compliance, Pelka said, "because there's no way to know if the officers are wearing them." And the town may not have cameras in its police cars.
Westport, for example, just finished installing a dashboard camera system that syncs with its body-worn devices earlier this year, but missed the state's July 1 deadline.
"We've had body-worn (cameras) for several years. We just completed the installation and rollout of body-worn and dash cam," Westport Lt. Eric Woods said.
As for state officials, "They put the mandates out there and don't tell you how you were going to do it," Woods said.
Westport police started looking for dashboard cameras once they learned of the new law, joining dozens of other departments talking to a limited number of vendors, Woods said.
Although two years sounds like a long time, he said it's also a long process.
"It's very time-consuming, even getting the process going. We had to move to a whole new body-cam system, dash cam system. The storage of this stuff is insane," Woods said.
Supply chain problems also slowed the process.
"What is mandated by the state and what is reality don't always jibe," Woods said.
Finally, he said, the cameras are "a huge expense." Westport, which is paying about $700,000 the first five years for both types of cameras and storage, plans to apply for a grant to reimburse at least part of the cost.
More than 70 miles northeast of Westport, Vernon's police cars lack cameras, putting it in violation of the law. Dashboard cameras are on order, Chief John Kelley said and the department is also replacing its body-worn cameras.
Kelley said he didn't think the process of putting together a request for proposals for the cameras would take as long as it did. The town's submission deadline was Nov. 30 and has chosen a $710,783 bid from Axon Enterprise Inc. for new body-worn and dash cams.
Kelley's lieutenant indicated that money, or a lack of it, also delayed the purchase.
"The town of Vernon's Police Department has been doing its due diligence to acquire dashboard cameras for its cruisers," Lt. Robert Marra said in a statement. "In addition to equipment purchases, the town also had to address financing this unfunded mandate."
Mayor Dan Champagne, a Republican who is a former state senator and ex-Vernon police sergeant, voted against the Police Accountability Act. Through a spokesperson, Champagne said his opposition to the law has nothing to do with the delay in purchasing dashboard cameras.
The department has had body-worn cameras since 2015, but "the body-cam contractor Vernon used does not offer dash cams," said David Owens, the town's communications specialist. "That necessitated starting over because the department wanted an integrated body cam/dash cam system because that is in the best interest of the community and is an industry best practice."
The department spent "a significant amount of time evaluating these camera systems," Owens said, and then "had to identify funds to pay for this unfunded state mandate. The town could not go to bid in good faith without having the funds available to cover the cost of this equipment."
Like Westport, Vernon is looking to apply for partial reimbursement. However, Vernon is only eligible for a 30 percent reimbursement for first-time camera purchases. Municipalities that are considered "distressed" qualify for a 50 percent reimbursement.
The failure to equip Vernon patrol vehicles with dash cams came to light after a fatal high-speed collision involving a town police SUV and a Nissan Sentra on April 2. Ironically, the Nissan did have a dashboard camera, but investigators found that it contained no video images or usable files, according to the warrant for the arrest of its driver, Phillip Vargas.
Investigators concluded Vargas was under the influence of alcohol and THC when he turned into the path of the Vernon police SUV, which was speeding down Hartford Turnpike — lights and sirens on — at more than 85 mph to help a fellow officer at a violent scene where he thought a gun had been fired, the warrant stated.
Vargas' front-seat passenger and fiancée, Bianca Colon Hernandez, died in the crash. A teacher at Springfield Preparatory Charter School in Massachusetts, Colon Hernandez grew up in Bridgeport.
Many police departments have dashboard cameras in addition to body cameras, and some have had them for years.
"When I was hired in 2007, we had in-car cameras that had VHS tapes," South Windsor Police Sgt. Mark Cleverdon said.
Meriden did, too. "We had VHS tapes in the trunks of the cruisers," Sgt. Michael Boothroyd said.
Passing on state grants
Of the 94 local police departments in Connecticut, 14 are not on the list of municipalities that have received funding for body-worn and/or dashboard cameras.
Hearst Connecticut Media Group contacted those departments, and each said they have both body and dashboard cameras that were funded through local budgets, federal grants, private donations or other sources.
Cleverdon said South Windsor is not on the list of grant recipients because it didn't ask for money. He said the town paid for body-worn and dash cams "long before the state accountability bill passed."
Meriden didn't want to depend on the state to contribute to the cameras because of the requirements that would have come with the grant money, Boothroyd said.
Windsor Locks funded its cameras through its budget for the same reason, Lt. Paul Cherniack said.
"At the time of the government grant, there were a lot of stipulations and variables that had not yet been worked out, so we were able to do it ourselves and move forward with a system that meets our needs," Cherniack said.
"We received our cameras last year, about April or May," he said. "Both cruiser and body cams are in place."
Windsor Locks leases its cameras, so they are "constantly being upgraded with the latest, greatest technologies as they evolve," Cherniack said.
The New Britain Police Department came up with a combination of local, state and federal funding sources to pay for its cameras, according to Rachel Zaniewski, spokesperson for Mayor Erin Stewart. Some money came from the U.S. Department of Justice, and some came from state Asset Forfeiture funds, which are proceeds of illegal drug sales.
New Britain has had body-worn cameras since 2021 and dashboard cameras years earlier, Zaniewski said.
One police department benefited from used cameras.
Matt Carl, interim deputy chief of the East Windsor Police Department, said his agency received donated body-worn cameras from Branford about four years ago. The town has had dashboard cameras since 2013 or 2014, he said.
"We were one of the early ones," he said.
"Our whole department has been on both body and car since 2020," Carl said.
'Don't know how we worked without them'
Carl said cameras are valuable tools that capture officers doing their jobs properly more often than they catch them making mistakes.
"It's used as a training aid for how to handle something differently," Carl said.
If someone has an unfounded complaint against an officer, police can show the person footage of the interaction, he said.
"We're able to sit down with the folks," Carl said, "and say, 'Here's the video.'"
"Our officers wouldn't work without them now," he said. "It is overwhelmingly supported by the officers. Basically, they're like, 'I don't know how we worked without them.'"
Even though the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association doesn't track which departments are complying with the camera requirement, the organization "has embraced the law requiring the use of body-worn and cruiser cameras in Connecticut," said Neil Dryfe, the group's president who is also chief of the Cheshire Police Department.
"Video footage has helped show the public the outstanding work the men and women of Connecticut law enforcement perform, sometimes in situations where their lives or the lives of ordinary citizens are in danger," said Dryfe, who added that he is not aware of any departments that lack body-worn cameras.
Stamford Assistant Police Chief Richard Conklin said videos provide helpful evidence, especially at chaotic scenes.
"You have it on film and often from different angles. Once you get back to headquarters, you can have different views, and it makes wonderful evidence. There's less to debate."
Mike Lawlor, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and former advisor on crime for former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration, said videos have become so commonplace that juries expect them during trials.
"At this point, if you don't have video, I think people are going to wonder," said Lawlor, who also was a prosecutor. "It's almost like DNA evidence: If you don't have it, it's a flaw in the case."
As far as using them to monitor police officers, he agrees cameras help them more than they hurt.
"The vast majority of the times, those videos help solve cases, help prove cases and exonerate them" when police are accused of wrongdoing, Lawlor said. "The vast majority of the time, it puts to rest conspiracy theories."
And when police lie or abuse their authority, that is often on camera, too. Lawlor cited the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis earlier this year as two examples.
In the Memphis case, Lawlor said, videos from body and street cameras revealed how the entire situation unfolded.
"You found out ... they completely lied about what happened," he said.
© 2023 The Middletown Press, Conn. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
