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• Police body cameras invade the privacy of citizens, potentially exposing victims and subjecting citizens to facial recognition software.

Under a current R.I. proposal, state taxpayers would pick up a projected $3 million tab for five years and then municipalities would pay the full costs.

The police chiefs in South Kingstown and North Kingstown said that they are reviewing the work of the committee and are waiting to see more as the final polices are developed.

Police body cameras provide visual and audio evidence that can independently verify events. In Texas, a police officer was fired, charged with murder, and sentenced to prison after body-worn camera footage contradicted his initial statement in a shooting of an unarmed youth.

Drone grantsfor fire departments

Informants or witnesses may fear reprisal from criminals or their associates. People being arrested may fear the damage of public exposure, such as being fired from a job.

It poses the political problem, said some elected officials, of a municipality getting locked into a program it cannot afford without subsidy. If it abandons the program because state money runs out, they face criticism for “hiding” police actions when the real issue is a budget.

Cameras may offer both better protection and more accountability for the both officers and civilians, say law enforcement officials.

Some police departments also use them for training and show both correct and incorrect ways of handling a particular incident.

Among key issues that need to be addressed in this policy include when to activate a camera, when to deactivate a camera, notice of recording to the public, officer review of video, compliance mechanisms and video-records retention.

Amid the Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd, a June 2020 Reuters/Ipsos poll found 92% of Americans wanted federal police officers to wear body cams.

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“We have a growing demand for licensed drone pilots and drones themselves,” explained Johnson. “We use them in a variety of ways, but they’ve become essential in documenting an accident scene. In the old days, police would lay down markers and begin the tedious task of reconstructing what happened. A drone allows us to capture pictures that can be pieced together in one big mosaic and do the same thing. It’s the difference of a road being closed three or four hours to only an hour.”

The grants align with the foundation’s Emergency Management Initiative, designed, in part, to fund special community safety equipment that is not necessarily covered with taxpayer dollars.

However, police authorities and Corrigan said, the work ahead in Rhode Island involves examining specific technology, camera uses on incidents, such potential or actual crime scenes and traffic stops, and the disclosure of recordings for prosecution and to the public.

A July 2020 University of Maryland School of Public Policy survey found 90% support for police officers being required to wear body cameras, including 85% of Republicans, 86% of independents, and 94% of Democrats

“Prior to committing to this, I will consult with the town council because after the five-year plan the cost will be on the town to continue the program. The state funding is for first responders so administration and detectives are not included,” he said.

“Since the national call for increased police accountability, every department knows that they are just one incident away from being in the national spotlight so there is a desire to protect the town and the officers by having that footage,” Narragansett Police Chief Sean Corrigan told The Independent this week.

“It’s been absolutely amazing,” said Carter, Purdue Extension Precision Ag Technology Educator. “When training is complete, operators have had hands-on experience with this equipment. It makes their jobs safer and them more efficient.”

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He added that cameras help with recording everyone’s actions when contentious incidents occur and research shows it provides a check-and-balance on civilians’ behavior as well as the professionalism of police officers.

FEMAdronegrant

Drones are often deployed to find missing persons, assist in search of fleeing fugitives, document accident and crime scenes, assist SWAT and criminal surveillance, and investigate homes too dangerous for humans to enter. The new drones are equipped with forward-looking infrared cameras and detect heat signatures of people who otherwise couldn’t been seen at night or in a wooded area, for example. Another use is to send a drone to a hazardous material incident to get a better idea of the hazard without having to send personnel into a potentially dangerous area.

“The entire point of the ‘Twenty for 2020’ campaign has been to show what we have been doing to increase professionalism, to identify what further improvements can be made, and to communicate to the public the great job our officers do for them,” the chief said.

“They were given information about UAV safety, specifically how high a drone can legally fly, line of sight, and flying over the top of people,” Carter explained.

Britannica Group, gatherers of data and information for encyclopedias, did a study of the pros and cons of police body-worn cameras.

University of Oklahoma Professor of Law Stephen E. Henderson, stated that the use of police body cameras could become psychologically damaging to officers because of constant surveillance of the camera is always recording.

DJIdrone grants

Narragansett Police Lt. Ryan Prest heads to his cruiser while on duty Tuesday afternoon. The Narragansett Police Department, like their counterparts in North Kingstown and South Kingstown, are part a growing number of local police departments weighing the future of mandated body cameras on their officers. Narragansett Police Chief Sean Corrigan is part of a four-person committee from the Rhode Island Police Chief’s Association studying the issue.

Chief Patrick Flanagan in North Kingstown said, he would consider getting them “if the state funds the project and there are no hidden costs in the future.”

He was a guest of the Randolph County Extension Office “Day on the Farm” program in October. His demonstration was made possible by a Ball Brothers Foundation grant that purchased the drones for the Purdue Extension Office in neighboring Blackford County.

Law enforcement grantsfor equipment 2025

Currently only six Rhode Island departments — including a state police pilot program — have them now. None are local or in South County.

Ball Brothers Foundation is one of the state’s oldest and largest family foundations. Annually, the foundation makes approximately $8 million in grants to support arts and culture, education, the environment, health, human services, and public affairs. The Muncie-based private foundation gives priority to projects and programs that improve the quality of life in the foundation’s home city, county, and state.

Law enforcement grantsfor equipment 2024

For instance, the city of Baltimore budgeted $11.3 million for its police body camera program in 2016. By 2020 those costs had ballooned to over $35 million, according to Britannica’s research.

Delaware County Emergency Management/Homeland Security received grants that supported the purchase of two drones, allowing the team to evaluate and assess hazards while keeping humans out of dangerous situations. As a result of the funding, there are always two drones and two pilots available for 24/7 emergency service. The funding also provided support equipment such as a hard case, spare parts, spare batteries and an iPad for mapping and zoning software.

“The model policy is going to require input from multiple stakeholders, but we have sufficient expertise in the state to work through this,” Corrigan said, noting that departments receiving state funds would be required to adopt the model policy.

Law enforcement grantsfor equipment 2024 PDF

He is a member of a four-person committee from the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association, along with the state attorney general’s office and the R.I. state police studying the variety of issues, including costs, for departments.

Each department in the state would be able to decline participating and as well would need to assess its own management of the program, including numbers of cameras, data storage of video, maintenance, and other operational requirements.

When an officer wearing a camera arrives at a domestic violence scene, the camera is able to record the immediate aftermath of the attack, including injuries the victim has suffered.

Purdue Extension Blackford County received $45,600 to purchase UAVs and sensors to use as part of its public safety training program. The program is designed specifically for law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency management professionals and local county officials. Besides using the drones in crime scenes and for police investigations, participants were trained in FAA regulations, law enforcement tactics, fire operations and emergency management applications.

TASERgrantsforlaw enforcement

Some reports say officers experience more assaults when wearing body cameras because those filmed reacted more strongly, especially when under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or suffering from mental health problems, Britannica research found.

Recording police encounters with the public could lead to the public exposure of private medical conditions and mental illness. Some opponents to the cameras say that victims of crimes, such as rape or domestic abuse, may be further traumatized by recordings.

Police body-worn cameras offer openness and accountability to the public, which is an attempt to mend or strengthen relationships between the police and their communities.

“Citizens should not conflate the shortcomings of police outside of R.I. with what we are doing here. Many of the reforms that other states are fighting to implement have been long-standing practices here in R.I.,” he said.

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Law enforcement grantsfor Vehicles

Equipping police departments with body cameras can be expensive as police forces have to budget not only for the camera but also for ancillary equipment (such as a car charger or mount), training, data storage facilities, extra staff to manage the video data, and maintenance costs.

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MUNCIE, INDIANA – Mark Carter was tired. But it was a good tired. He’d spent several days in a kind of show-and-tell with Randolph County first-graders, teaching them about unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), why they are important to public safety efforts, and how to operate them.

State and law enforcement officials are targeting the next 12 to 18 months for making them more widely used. Right now, Providence, Cranston, East Providence, Newport, and Tiverton use them routinely.

“We are in the beginning stages of looking at the overall program specifically policy development, camera models, and data storage possibilities,” said Chief Joel Ewing-Chow of South Kingstown.

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Known in law enforcement by the term BWC, short for body-worn cameras, they come amid technology changes that have put video recorders just a button away today on cell phones, which bystanders and sometimes suspects themselves use to film encounters with the police.

“We rely on grants to fund equipment like this,” said Kyle Johnson, Delaware County’s Chief Information Officer. “We do not have equipment funds in our annual budget to draw on, so opportunities like these are what allow us access to industry-standard gear.”

“Also, officers are calling for this technology because they find themselves frequently being video recorded by citizens and with BWC they are at least ensured to have all of the footage for the incident and to capture the behavior of subjects whom officers are dealing with,” Corrigan explained.

State and law enforcement officials said that the committee will establish rules and responsibilities for municipalities accepting state funds for the program.

“Every police department in the state has expressed interest in being a part of this,” Corrigan said of cameras and whose review is included in the association’s “Twenty for 2020 Campaign” designed to raise awareness about police professional training, openness, communication and human rights.

Many police departments, especially smaller departments with smaller budgets, have tried and later suspended body-worn camera programs citing rising costs of the cameras, maintenance of the programs, employees, and data storage, it said.

Carter said his office has trained 13 state police, seven city police officers, eight county officers, a half dozen firefighters and five county emergency management people. “This kind of technology is an absolute game-changer,” Carter said. “We can conduct a 10-minute flight at the scene of an accident and have enough information to make an accurate police report and provide information for insurance purposes or to the county prosecutor, if they need it.”

This year, Ball Brothers Foundation has awarded more than $50,000 to fund the purchase of drones and to create a unique program to train emergency responders on how to use drones in their work.

The campaign and body cameras attempt to address accusations of bias excessive force by police nationwide. The camera effort has recently been boosted by state officials who want to provide five years of taxpayer funding for equipping about 1,700 officers in departments statewide.

He, as with the other chiefs locally and throughout the state, want to show that they are committed to giving an on-the-scene look at how officers handle their work, which real-time body cameras can help bring, he said.

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