CAMERA COMBATS CRIME

City motorists will soon have a new high-tech eye watching them.

This morning, the Cape Girardeau Police Department is scheduled to have its first mobile video camera installed in one of its patrol cars. Police Sgt. Carl Kinnison said the department will primarily use the camera for its weekend, driving-while-intoxicated patrol.

"Right now, we have the camera in the booking room where we can tape a person who has been arrested for drunk driving," he said. "But that leaves out a very important part of the DWI arrest process, which involves the development of the probable cause for the stop and the probable cause for the arrest," said Kinnison.

"To be able to actually show that to a judge and or a jury at a subsequent trial is very beneficial."

The camera will be installed inside the vehicle at the Motorola dealership of Johnson Communications Service Inc., 1213 N. Kingshighway. The company that manufactures the camera, Kinnison said, contracts with Motorola for installation of the cameras nationwide.

Kinnison said the camera costs about $4,500. Federal grant money, funneled through the Cape Girardeau Community Traffic Safety program, paid for the camera, he said.

The price is high for a video camera, Kinnison acknowledged. But he said there are several features on any kind of vehicle camera that make it more expensive than a home video camera.

"Number one, you need a lens that is very small, that doesn't obstruct the view of the driver." The camera's monitor is also mounted inside the car, he said.

The camera being installed in the Cape Girardeau police vehicle comes with an overhead monitor, and a video cassette recorder in a case mounted in the vehicle's trunk, all connected by wires. A wireless microphone worn by the police officer picks up his or her comments up to 1,000 feet away.

The camera can be activated manually, by remote control, or automatically when a police car's emergency lights are on, Kinnison said. Department officers, however, will activate the camera either manually or by remote control, he said.

"It will be based on the officer. They'll have the opportunity to turn it on when they get out of the car on every traffic stop. If they don't and they think it's something that they want to have recorded, then they can turn it on with the remote control.

"From a DWI perspective, you can begin recording as soon as the officer notices something erratic about the driving of the person he's following."

DWI stops are not all the video camera can be used for. More law enforcement agencies are purchasing the cameras for officer safety, said Kinnison.

For example, he said, the video camera of a Texas police officer killed a few months ago during a traffic stop recorded that slaying. Authorities didn't know the suspects' names, but they put out warrants on the suspects just the same, based on their videotaped descriptions.

Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper Blaine Adams, who works out of the Jackson zone office, said he's had a video camera in his vehicle for at least two months and that it has worked well. The 8mm camera records onto a tape that is slightly bigger than a cassette tape.

"I haven't had to use it in court yet, but I think it will be real handy in court. Because ... whenever you make a DWI arrest, the drunk a lot of times is going to say, `I didn't do that,' or `I wasn't driving that way.' Well, you weren't? Let's look at the tape," Adams said.

Plus, Adams said, the camera allows for "good self-evaluation." After making a DWI arrest, he said, a patrolman can take the tape home and review it for things he or she shouldn't have done.

Kinnison said he would like to see the department purchase one more video camera for the DWI patrol. Primarily two cars are used for the patrol, he said.

"It seems to be a trend in law enforcement to move toward purchasing video cameras for all patrol units," said Kinnison. "So maybe sometime in the future we may see more of our cars equipped with cameras."