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Police in the Village of Westhampton Beach have been using bodycams since 2016.
After hammering out a new contract with the Southampton Town Patrolman’s Benevolent Association last September, the town is moving ahead with plans to equip the Southampton Town Police Department with body cameras — with a full rollout as soon as this fall, according to Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman.
Since announcing its new bodycam program last year, the town has secured a $240,000 grant from the State Division of Criminal Justice Services and will spend an additional match of $240,000 to equip the officers.
The bodycam plan took off last September as the town was negotiating a new contract for its unionized police force comprising more than 100 officers. Six officers with the department had field-tested various body cameras last year as the department worked toward selecting a vendor, which it has not yet done. Axon, G-Tech and Motorola are all under consideration.
When fully implemented, the town will join East Hampton, Westhampton Beach, Sag Harbor and the Village of Southampton as South Fork law enforcement agencies that have either deployed or have plans to deploy the bodycams.
The devices have been in use in Westhampton Beach since 2016. The East Hampton Town Police Department announced its bodycam program earlier this year after obtaining its own $240,000 state grant, and said it hoped to equip up to 50 officers with the devices by the fall.
For its part, the Suffolk County Police Department started to roll out its bodycam program in June 2022.
The new PBA contract hammered out last fall contains language that allows Town Police Chief James Kiernan to modify officers’ uniforms to accommodate the technology, which has been in use for more than 20 years and has been long praised by police reform advocates for providing greater transparency in policing.
Schneiderman noted this week that bodycams “are good for the public and for the police.”
But, there’s a new glitch that emerged in recent days that needs to be resolved before the technology is deployed, Kiernan said. His agency has not yet been able to select a vendor to provide the bodycams and associated technology, he said, owing in part to a snafu over funding streams that also included another anticipated $240,000 grant from the federal government.
The federal grant was contingent on a town match of $240,000, which was the same requirement of the state grant. The town can’t use the same matching funds to meet the demands of the respective state and federal bodycam grant programs and, as a result, Kiernan said his agency is now reworking the federal grant application.
