Grant buys body cam for every New Phila cop
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (July 15, 2024) – The city’s police officers are now sporting body-worn cameras.
The police department received a grant to buy 30 of them that Chief Tessa Pohovey says have been in use for a couple of weeks now.
“So far, I”m really happy with them. I’ve reviewed a couple of things, and the quality of the video seems to be very good. It’s just nice to have that extra angle now as opposed to previously. We just had dash cams, so it’s now good to have the other angle when an officer has to get out of the car.”
Pohovey says having the ability to watch an incident unfold from the officer’s perspective promotes transparency and bolsters their court cases.
“And then also for any allegations of misconduct against our department. It’s going to help us to be able to contest those, and we can review it for ourselves and have a more in-depth look at these encounters.”
And she sees the footage the cameras capture as a valuable training tool.
“It’s kind of like watching game film. I have a sports background, so I just kind of relate it to that but whatever scenario we might find ourselves in, we can go back and watch it later and kind of critique ourselves and say, ‘We could have probably done this better,’ or ‘Look how great we did here.’ I think it’s going to help our tactics in the long run.”
The New Philadelphia Police Department also recently upgraded to a compatible cruiser dash camera system and started using new incident reporting software.