Expansion of the Newport Police Department's current Body Worn Camera (BWC) Program

The Town of Newport, New Hampshire, proposes to expand its existing police department BWC pilot
program to a full implementation with one new BWC issued to each sworn police officer. The
Newport Police Department began testing and evaluating WatchGuard BWCs in 2020. During the
testing and evaluation phase of the Newport Police Department’s BWC pilot program, three cameras
(later expanded to five) were purchased and shared among the Newport Police Department’s 12 sworn
police officers. These test and evaluation models have now exceeded their regular service life.
During the pilot program, BWCs were found to be highly successful in providing digital evidence in
support of criminal prosecutions, adjudicating citizen complaints in a fair and efficient manner, and
fostering an atmosphere of trust between the police department and the community. The Newport
Police Department also learned valuable technical lessons about critical features of BWCs (such as the
need for integration with cruiser-mounted video cameras and the benefit of a single magnetic mounted
device), managing a digital evidence library and sharing digital evidence with prosecutors and defense
counsel, and the severe limitations of having multiple officers share one BWC.
With these successes and technical lessons in mind, the purpose of this project is to replace and expand
the Newport Police Department’s five BWCs (which do not currently integrate with the cruisermounted
cameras) with twelve BWCs to be issued individually to each sworn police officer (and
which do integrate with the cruiser-mounted cameras).
Project activities include purchasing twelve Motorola Solutions WatchGuard V300 BWCs, installing
two V300 transfer stations, bundling three V300 in-car Wi-Fi case stations, and integrating the devices
into our current Motorola WatchGuard digital evidence library.
Expected outcomes include increased compliance with the Newport Police Department’s BWC policy
due to greater availability of camera units, higher rates of criminal convictions due to more complete
usage of BWC evidence, reduced numbers of citizen complaints due to the accountability afforded by
BWCs, and more efficient processing of citizen complaints.