Credit: Tosh Cuellar
Falls Township police will be fitted with body-worn cameras this year.
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The Falls Township Board of Supervisors voted last Tuesday evening to pay WatchGuard Video $166,620 for a five-year contract, which includes a complete equipment overhaul three years in.
The township’s 53 members of the police department will receive their own camera. The footage recorded will be uploaded to a server, police Chief Nelson Whitney said.
The new system will take about 90 days to arrive.
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Training and installation of the system will take place, with all officers being trained, Whitney said.
The system is expected rollout in summer.
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“This is technology that complements the in-car cameras,” the chief said. “I see the main advantage of this technology being a tremendous improvement in our ability to collect and document evidence during incidents where arrests are made.”
Numerous Bucks County law enforcement agencies have officers equipped with body-worn cameras.
A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report in 2018 found nearly 50 percent of general-purpose law enforcement agencies have body-worn cameras.
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Body-worn cameras can provide key evidence during investigations by police or probes into police conduct and use of force.
In a fatal incident last August, Falls Township police shot a father of six who authorities said pulled a knife at close distance to an officer during a tense domestic call. The district attorney, who cleared the officers involved after an investigation, relied on accounts of the incident and evidence. At the time, officers were not equipped with body-worn cameras that could have shown what happened.
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Falls Township Supervisors Chairperson Jeff Dence was in support of the body-worn camera system.
“This is going to bring us up to the modern-day body cameras that most police departments have,” Dence said.
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