North Dakota Highway Patrol Body-Worn Camera and Digital Evidence Improvement and Enhancement Project

The North Dakota Highway Patrol (NDHP) serves the entire State of North Dakota, with a population of 779,094, according to the 2020 US Census Bureau. To enhance operations, promote public trust, and provide transparency and accountability, the NDHP has recently fully implemented a BWC program. The current program has 159 sworn officers outfitted with a BWC. This grant would provide technology upgrades to enhance digital uploading capabilities of the BWC videos to a secure central server that is also compatible in rural areas; and provide introductory best practices BWC training to users within the NDHP agency, interested North Dakota law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and other stakeholders. With the funding assistance of the grant, the North Dakota Highway Patrol will  utilize these grant funds to provide training to enhance the understanding of digital evidence and ensure best practices are understood by law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across the state.  Additionally,  the NDHP will utilize the funds to enhance the capabilities of our BWC program in rural areas of the state by addressing deficiencies created by poor or reduced broadband cellular coverage.  To mitigate the rural impacts and improve coverage and abilities for our troopers to transfer data, we will utilize the funding for in-car router and antenna technology and the purchase of 9 additional body cameras to allow for swapping BWC's to allow for uploading..