East Lyme — Almost two months after rolling out state-mandated body cameras, the police department's top brass say the equipment is making officers more transparent and efficient.

"This is an outstanding way to ensure transparency, to ensure that officers are acting appropriately. It's documenting everything we do," Chief Mike Finkelstein said. "But at the same time, it allows us so many tools as law enforcement to better do our jobs and do them more efficiently."

Twenty-eight body cameras — and the cloud-based system for managing footage from each unit — came to $138,279, according to department documents. There are 26 full-time officers, one part-time officer and a chief on the force.

The cost going forward is about $30,000 a year for storage and licensing, Finkelstein said. That includes the automatic replacement of all the cameras every 2½ years.

Lt. Dana Jezierski said the cameras must record every law enforcement interaction officers have with the public. There are also certain triggers that will turn the camera on automatically, such as an officer activating the lights and siren in a cruiser or pulling a Taser from its holster.

The body cameras and storage software, as well as the previously purchased in-car cameras, are products of Axon Enterprise Inc. That's the same company that makes Tasers.

The department did not select the technology that would add drawing a firearm to the list of actions that automatically initiates recording.

Finkelstein said add-ons for numerous automatic triggers are available, but they become costly. “It is an add-on we can reconsider,” he said of the sidearm trigger.

Lt. Mike Macek said it's not necessarily considered a law enforcement encounter every time an officer interacts with the public. "If somebody walks up to you and asks for directions, you're not turning it on for that," he said.

Jezierski noted that the body camera doesn't just record going forward once an officer sets it to record. There's a feature that captures video-only footage going back 30 seconds, as well.

Finkelstein said the feature can be valuable in "critical stress" situations that unfold so quickly, officers don't immediately have the ability to activate their cameras.

The sweeping police accountability law passed by the Connecticut legislature last summer requires every police department in the state to provide body cameras for all of their officers by July 2022.

The legislation, meant to reform policing statewide, was passed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by an officer in Minneapolis. It also requires officers to report instances of excessive force by colleagues, bans chokeholds in most instances and rolls back some qualified immunity protections for officers, allowing civil lawsuits to be brought against them in certain cases.

Jezierski said a call came in recently with a secondhand account of an officer acting unprofessionally. When she pulled up the body camera footage, she said she found the accusation "couldn't be further from the truth."

"It was good to be able to go back and watch it and dispel that false accusation," she said.

Finkelstein said the footage also can be used as a training tool: "Sometimes for us it comes down to figuring out could the officer have said it better? Could the officer have done it better?"

Efficiency

The two lieutenants and the chief said the evidence.com aspect of the system goes beyond storing the data. It organizes files, makes them easier to share with the court system and the public, and enhances communication within the department.

The evidence.com software creates folders that can organize all files — not just footage from the department's own cameras — to document a case. In a car theft investigation, for example, officers can send a secure link to a homeowner to upload a doorbell video of the incident to the system with no file size or bandwidth issues.

Finkelstein said it's been "a huge time saver" to be able to transmit the files to the court system through a direct link instead of relying on email that can't easily accommodate large files.

Macek noted officers at a crime scene can use the app to take photos that go directly into the cloud-based system instead of being stored on the officer's personal device.

Police departments are required under the state Freedom of Information Act to release body camera footage unless it involves minors, victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, homicide, suicide or a fatal accident if the release of the video could reasonably be construed as an invasion of personal privacy. There are certain permissions outlined in statute that allow for the release of video that includes minors, however.

According to Jezierski, the department has not yet had any members of the public ask to view body camera footage through a Freedom of Information request. She said most of the calls to look at videos come from people involved in particular cases.

On a day-to-day basis, video footage helps streamline the reporting process by reminding officers exactly what happened when it's time to put it in writing, Jezierski said. Finkelstein said being able to pull up crime scene footage while working on an investigation makes it easier to go back and determine what and who was there.

Macek pointed to a feature that opens communication between personnel at the command center and the officers in the field during an active incident.

"We have the ability to go remote into other officers' cameras," he said. "We can log in and watch exactly what they're seeing and kind of help direct what's going on."

Departments in many area towns already have started body cameras, with Groton Town coming in as one of the early adopters back in 2017. Finkelstein said his department leaned on the Groton team when examining the options.

"While we weren't the first to go to body cameras, we took advantage of the fact other people went before us to say, 'what do you like and what don't you like?' That included talking to administration, records, officers and finding out what was going to work best for our department," he said.

The Board of Finance last November approved a special appropriation for the purchase based on an anticipated 30% reimbursement from the state for costs directly related to the cameras themselves. The state Bond Commission this week authorized $13,440.

The commission also authorized $35,116 for body cameras for the Waterford Police Department.

e.regan@theday.com