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Police Camera Technology Demonstrated For Springfield Officials

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WAMC
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   A Massachusetts state legislator is asking the Baker administration to come up with guidelines for police to use body and cruiser cameras. 

     State Rep. Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield said he’s asked the state’s public safety secretary to prepare a report on “ best practices” for using the technology that Massachusetts police departments have been slow to adopt.

     " Boston is on a temporary trial basis, other cities and towns are looking at it, hopefully Springfield can be a leader," said Gonzalez.

     In Springfield, the use of cameras is a subject of contract talks with both the police supervisors and patrolman’s unions, according to Police Commissioner John Barbieri.

    Officials met Tuesday with representatives of a company that has offered Springfield police a one-year free trial of cameras, software and training.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.