While police dash cameras have been in use since the late 1980s, West Hempfield Police have not had the technology available in every vehicle.

That will change after the board of supervisors voted unanimously March 4 to approve a $42,000, three-year lease agreement for seven state-of-the-art dash cameras — one for each police vehicle in use.

"We had five cameras (in vehicles), but two of them failed recently," said police chief Mark Pugliese.

Township manager Ron Youtz said money was set aside to replace a camera or two as needed, but after talking to Pugliese, they decided to approach the board with a recommendation to outfit the entire fleet at once with the same technology.

"These are not some older model camera or a sale item, are they?" asked supervisor Frank Burkhart.

"No," Pugliese said.

And unlike the first dash camera systems that used grainy, often blurry VHS magnetic tape — and the current West Hempfield systems that use compact discs to transfer recordings from devices in the vehicles — the new dash cams will live feed all dash cam footage to a dedicated server.

"These cameras will also record in high definition," Pugliese said.

He added, "We can also have the server save recordings to individual files."

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Pugliese said that footage — by law — would only be saved if needed for a criminal investigation.

"The systems we have now have worked very well for us during questionable incidents," Pugliese said. He did not elaborate on what those incidents were.

He said the new systems would also save the department money from having to "shred the (compact) discs when we were done with them."

Youtz said that Susquehanna Bank was financing the hardware. He did not go into specific detail of the loan or payment terms on the three-year lease agreement.

Pugliese added that the vendor was also offering the department a $1,000 trade-in for each of the older camera systems.

The new cameras will only be installed in active patrol vehicles, Pugliese said.

"The chief's car, for example, would not have a camera," he said.

No time frame was offered as to when the new systems would be purchased or installed in the vehicles.