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Colonie among localities adding police body cameras

The Axon Body Camera System.
Dave Lucas
/
WAMC
The Axon Body Camera System.

The Albany County Town of Colonie is going to equip its police officers with body cameras.

Supervisor Peter Crummey says for the past year he and Chief Michael Woods worked on the project "shoulder to shoulder."

"Because we both agree that it's an important element of policing in today's world," Crumey said. "What we've done and what the town board unanimously supported last week is for the town to engage in a five year contract, so we'll have a five-year contract with payments, equal payments, typically throughout the five years. And at the end of the five years, it would start all over again, under new and different terms. During the five-year period, however, no less than twice, will the technology and the cameras be upgraded pursuant to the contract."

Crummey, a Republican, says the town will make annual payments of about $200,000 for the five-year package, totaling approximately $997,000.

"The first payment is almost is nearly entirely paid for by a grant that we've applied for from the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services," said Crummey. "And that will take care of payment number one, the grant money. Payment number two, I've decided to allocate some money from our American Rescue funds, and that will give me lead time in order to incorporate the last three years right into our regular town budget. But I'll have time to plan now."

Woods says his officers will be outfitted with 115 Axon body cameras, the same make Albany police have been using since 2017. Niskayuna police recently began wearing body cams.

"They provide all the storage, and part of our package or program that we wanted to do is obviously we're dealing with the new laws for discovery," said Woods. "Part of our project is we're going to have, we have two interview rooms inside the police department that are have audio and video when we're doing interviews. Axon is going to have their system tied in with the body cameras, so our audio video rooms, interview rooms, our body camera footage, that all goes to the same storage now. And it really is going to streamline our discovery process when we send that discovery information down to the district attorney's office."

Last week the Plattsburgh Common Council voted to accept a $100,000 state grant to fund body camerasfor their police department.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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