Police Chief Michael Wynn updates the City Council on the status of body and dashboard cameras for the force.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The city has officially said "yes" to police surveillance.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a five-year contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for body-worn cameras and dashboard cameras.

Councilors also accepted a grant of funds in the amount of $166,586.73 from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security to support the program.

Police Chief Michael Wynn explained that the department decided to add the dashboard cameras in the middle of the pilot that began late last year and ends at the beginning of the contract.

"The body cameras will come online first. The cruiser cameras are going to take some time. We're in the middle of taking delivery of cars so we wouldn't want to outfit cars that are going to be redlined during that end of season," Wynn said.

"We don't have a firm delivery date for body cameras, we're really dependent on Axon for that. They got us the cameras for the pilot very quickly but they've given us indication that they're still dealing with supply chain issues. I don't expect it to be months but I can't tell you it's going to be weeks."

Since the death of Miguel Estrella by police last year, body cameras have been one of the asks by the community to ensure accountability.

The equipment was endorsed by the council in May and at the end of November it was reported that the body camera pilot was "back on track" after discussions with the union.

Each of the city's 87 sworn-in officers will be armed with a camera.

The grant will cover about $162,000 in equipment costs and about $4,300 in supplies costs. The body cameras are quoted for about $1,176,000 over the next five years, and 20 fleet cameras are quoted at about $281,400.

On the agenda was also a petition from local attorney Ronald Del Gallo III to pass an ordinance that requires a police officer to intervene when they see another engaging in unlawful violence against a person that results in bodily injury or substantial physical pain.

The petition is in response to the police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tenn., last month. Five officers are charged in the deadly beating and several emergency medical technicians and firefighters have been fired for failing to provide care. 

Del Gallo feels it is important to make a statement on this issue and his ordinance offers slightly greater protection than state law, which he said states that an officer can determine if it is a risk to themselves.

"It just adds another tool to the litigants' arsenal to enforce their civil rights, which doesn't have all that baggage of federal Civil Rights Acts and that also helps the city from liability, (Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York) liability. You would have a clear policy in place that it is their duty to intervene."

Councilor at Large Peter White unsuccessfully motioned to file the petition. While he supports the spirit of Del Gallo's proposal, he felt that it may be redundant with the department's use of force policy and statewide efforts for police reform.

The policy states that any officer observing another using force that is clearly unreasonable should intervene when in the position to do so and report the observation to a supervisor.

"I understand his petition goes a little bit further. We have Civil Service that we have to keep in mind, we have the unions we have to keep in mind, so it's no hard feelings if anyone votes against this," White said.

"I understand where you're coming from, however, I think that because since 2018, we've had this in our Police Department's policies, we discussed earlier tonight how the chief issues policies, we normally do not put these things in our ordinances.

"And that the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the POST Commission, is dealing with these issues, and in attorney Del Gallo's own documents to us, he says this was a redundancy just to add it to city ordinance versus going by state statute."

The council also referred a petition from Ward 2 Councilor Charles Kronick to adopt MGL Chapter 41, Section 98C, which requires officers to have visible badges or identification on them.

Kronick explained that he worked with resident Jacquelyn Sykes, whose boyfriend Daniel Gillis was shot and killed by police in 2017 after a call was made for a domestic incident.

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