Fortville police get video cameras in their cars to collect evidence of incident – The Daily Reporter

FORTVILLE – The Fortville City Council earlier this week approved allowing the Fortville Police Department (FPD) to spend less than $10,000 per year for the next three years to purchase video cameras to install in its police cars.

Fortville Police Chief Patrick Bratton explained to the council why all of his officers have been wearing body cameras for some time. The FPD is one of the few in the county that does not have video cameras in its police vehicles.

“This is something we have been missing since we got rid of our old VHS system,” Bratton said.

Bratton said officers need the video system because in-car video evidence systems greatly assist police in gathering information that helps them build stronger evidence against criminals.

“Currently we have the body cameras and they’re great, but they don’t record driving behavior,” Bratton said. “Currently you have to get out of the car or all you see is the steering wheel while the officer is driving.”

Bratton said video cameras in cars will be helpful in recording what an officer sees during drunk driving incidents, when a vehicle fails to comply with police commands or when a suspect talks in the car.

Bratton received a quote for $36,000 per year from his current body-worn video system provider, but obtained another quote from a company called Samsara and learned that it would cover all of Fortville Police’s camera needs for $9,200 the first year and then $9,100 each for the remaining two years of the three-year contract.

“The place (Samsara) I found is working with several government agencies, including the city of Boston,” Bratton said. “They take video evidence outside and inside the car.”

Bratton said he has the money to purchase the cameras needed from the police vehicle fund, so the city doesn’t have to provide him with additional funding. Because the units don’t need to be professionally installed, Bratton plans to move quickly to get the camera units into all 13 police vehicles.

Before voting, council members wanted to know if the units offered cloud storage, which Bratton assured them.

“They will maintain it, and then in the event of an event, we will have the ability to access it and archive something,” Bratton said.

Bratton then told the council the story of a suspect who recently set fire to a house in the area. He also spoke about the incident in one of the police vehicles while he was being transported back to the county after fleeing the area.

“He made the comment, ‘Did I do my job? Did I burn the house down?’ Well, if we had video in the car, we would have a record of all of that,” Bratton said. “We call that an ‘excited utterance.’ I want to have better ways of recording things like that for evidentiary purposes.”

The system records in a 68-hour loop, giving an officer plenty of time to go in after the recording and get the evidence they need before the recording is overwritten. All archived video is stored in the cloud.

“It can also reach the emergency services,” Bratton said. “It can send a text or phone alert if someone has an accident.”

Bratton said he spoke with officials at the county’s emergency dispatch center and they agreed they could set something up to alert emergency dispatch if an officer was involved in an accident and couldn’t call for help.

“That was one of the safety features built into the system,” Bratton said.

Currently, officers are required to download and save all body-worn video recordings needed for each case, and they will be required to do the same for all video recordings taken with the new vehicle system.