Body cameras will start rolling out this summer to about half of the roughly 4,500 Pennsylvania State Police troopers, according to a department spokesperson.
The deployment is part of a five-year, $10.1 million contract with Arizona-based Axon Enterprise inked in March and includes the purchase of 1,700 in-car cameras, 2,500 body cameras and 100 interview room recorders. The department had run a limited program several years ago to test body cameras with a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lt. Adam Reed, a spokesperson for the State Police, told the Union Progress that the department is currently planning how to implement the cameras before starting the pilot program this summer. More cameras will roll out later this year, along with corresponding updates to department policy and procedure.
Reed declined to comment further. The Union Progress submitted a records request for documents describing the contract schedule.
Many law enforcement agencies across the country have turned to body cameras as a way to increase transparency by recording interactions with the public. David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told the Union Progress that it “definitely isn’t great” that such recordings will not be available during investigations of two fatal shootings this month involving the State Police.
“It would be better if all police officers in that situation had a camera, and had them properly turned on and running. It wouldn’t guarantee that we’d be able to understand a situation only one way, or that every question would be answered, but it would at least be something,” he said. “Civilians kind of expect that police will have cameras, and they expect that they’ll be turned on properly, so when that’s not the case, I think people rightly question, ‘Why not?’”
Harris cautioned that purchasing camera equipment and software is only the beginning of implementing them. He said the State Police should take care with crafting a policy about when cameras can or should be turned on, and how enforcement of those rules will work.
“You can’t just give these things out — take them out of the box, give them out at roll call and say, ‘Go do it,’” he said. “You actually have to formulate a policy, train on the policy and deploy them according to some kind of priority.”
State Police played something of a “game of cat and mouse” with a male shooter last weekend in rural central Pennsylvania, according to one department official, which left the shooter and one trooper dead, and another trooper in critical condition.
Police first encountered Brandon Stine, 38, when security camera footage showed him firing at vehicles parked at a State Police station just outside Mifflintown, Juniata County. Stine would go on to shoot one trooper who was inside his vehicle in downtown Mifflintown, and then get into a deadly shootout with troopers near a diner-style restaurant, according to the Lewistown Sentinel.
Another shooting took place earlier this month in Philadelphia, when troopers responded to reports of illegal street racing in the wee hours of the morning. Anthony Allegrini Jr. was driving an Audi on Interstate 95 when police said he “failed to yield” and struck two responding troopers, one of whom then fired a single shot and killed the 18-year-old.
Allegrini’s family has called for a full investigation of what happened, in particular after videos on social media purportedly show Allegrini physically struggling on the highway and not receiving medical attention. The family lawyer, Enrique Latoison, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it was unacceptable for troopers not to wear body cameras.
“Basically in 2023 there’s no excuse for no department, especially the state of Pennsylvania, to not have body cameras. There’s no excuse for it,” he said. “Bodycams protect the officers. They protect the defendants. And also fuels transparency for all parties involved.”
Jon, a copy editor and reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and working as a co-editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Reach him at jmoss@unionprogress.com.
