Minnesota State Patrol Is Now Fully Equipped With Body Cameras
St. Paul, MN (KROC-AM News) - The Minnesota State Patrol has officially completed the statewide rollout of the Body Camera Project.
The state patrol made the announcement in a news release Tuesday stating the state patrol is fully equipped with body-worn cameras as of May 5th.
"Although we’d like to think every state trooper is perfect, we are human beings just like everyone else. Capturing interactions on body-worn cameras will help hold everyone accountable because they provide a record of what actually occurred between the trooper and the member of the public," said Col. Matt Langer, chief of the Minnesota State Patrol.
During the project, the state patrol installed 644 in-car camera systems and issued body-worn cameras to the 613 sworn members of the patrol and 92 non-sworn members. Body-worn cameras have also been issued to commercial vehicle inspectors and capitol security officers. In total, 705 body cameras and 1,349 camera systems were issued over the last five months.
Since the start of the project, the agency has captured more than 281,680 pieces of video evidence which is over 60,600 hours of video. In the last month, troopers captured 96,380 pieces of video evidence which is over 19,800 hours of video.
Troopers are projected to record an average of 3,212.66 pieces of video evidence – 616.36 hours -- per day across the state now that the project is complete.
The rollout began on December 1st, 2021, and was completed on time and within the projected budget.