Markeshia Ricks Photo
Wingate: “Disheartened.”
With the clocking ticking on chances for full reimbursement, the police department’s quest to outfit all cops with body cameras has stalled over a bureaucratic snafu.
Harp administration officials — with police officials notably absent — described that snafu Tuesday night to an unimpressed committee of the Board of Alders, which in response delayed a a vote on pursuing a grant for the cameras.
The police department has been moving toward outfitting every one of its more than 450 officers with a body camera. The progress has been methodical and deliberate — and in the eyes of some, slow —as nearby police departments like Hamden, Branford and even Yale University have body cameras in place, which help provide documentation of what really happens in controversial encounters with the public.
Carter (center) and crew in the hot seat … without a PD rep.
And now New Haven’s body camera program could be further delayed.
Almost two years ago, the New Haven department conducted a 90-day study of two body cameras with some 50 police officers who volunteered to participate. The department told the Board of Alders Public Safety Committee back in November that it had completed its trial, selected a camera, and was ready to shop, well in time to meet a June 30 deadline to receive full state reimbursement for the costs of the cameras.
At a City Hall hearing Tuesday night, Chief Administrator Officer Michael carter along with Emergency Operations Center Deputy Director Maggie Targrove and Controller Daryl Jones told that same committee that the department is redoing that pilot in part because some technology has changed, but mostly because the department failed to conduct a proper procurement process. It had not bid the cameras through a request for proposal (RFP) to select the camera that not only meets department needs but provides the best price.
The Harp administration found out about a month after that November presentation to alders about how those previously tested cameras were acquired. Interested companies allowed the department to test them for free. Once that was discovered, an RFP was issued in January, and a second test got underway. This time two companies — one of which was tested in the previous pilot — made the cut, and a second pilot has been ongoing since last week.
The new pilot involves only three police officers this time, one from each shift. Results are expected to be ready by April 28.
Targrove told alders that the body camera program is estimated to cost between $1.8 million and $2.2 million including equipment, storage and maintenance over the next five years. Storage is a big part of the cost.
Carter and crew were before the alders committee Tuesday evening to ask for the approval of an application from the department to the state Office of Policy and Management for $1.5 million for the program. If the alders don’t approve the request in time for the department to get its application in by June 30, reimbursement from the state drops from 100 percent to 50 percent.
They were hoping to get the committee alders to move the process forward while the pilot wraps up so that the application would still be in position to pass before the deadline. But alders, exacerbated by the bungled procurement and the lack of police representation Tuesday — acting Chief Anthony Campbell was out of town and no other chief showed up to represent the department in his stead — chose to hold the matter over to next month.
The Harp administration will have to return in May with the police chief or some other representative from the department in tow. That’s because the Public Safety Committee’s members said they want to hear the results of the new pilot along with a more detailed defense of how the city went from being ready to purchase body cameras to now being not nearly as close as alders felt they were led to believe.
Public Safety Committee Chairman Gerald Antunes told the administrators that he was disturbed by the lack of transparency in the process, particularly in light of what he characterized as a verbal “beating” that the committee took just weeks ago over the establishment of a civilian review board. He said body cameras are part of the transparency that is important to those who have advocated for a CRB.
“It feels like we’ve been sold this bill of goods,” he said. “It appears that the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.”
Antunes: Not attuned to the administration’s explanations.
Committee Vice Chairman Brian Wingate further pressed on the lack of representation from the police department that had months prior seemed to have all its ducks in a row as far as moving forward with finally getting cameras on every officer.
“It’s really hard to sit here tonight and act like everything is good with this process,” he said. “I am disheartened that everybody is not here. Someone from public safety should be sitting here.”
So th union backed alders stall again the implementation of body cameras that both the administration and the residents of this city want, but the police union does not want. It looks like this will be another case that they make a self serving decision, and not the one that is the people's choice. We need to vote them out!