Aug 13, 2022 2 min read

Monongahela Police Chief Kevin Harris said the idea to get body cameras for the department’s officers has been in the works for about three years.

Thanks to a $30,000 donation from EQT Corp., it looks like the idea will come to fruition.

“It wasn’t very easy to take on (in the past) because of the price,” Harris said. “That’s been our hold-up, but this donation that we received springboards us from wanting to do it to now being able to put ourselves in the position to being able to do it.”

Harris said it was too early to determine when the department would have the cameras or how much they would cost, but he hoped to get 10 to 15 of them.

The Monongahela Police Department has eight full-time officers and 22 part-time officers. Harris wants to equip each of the full-time officers with a camera and have the remainder at the station for the part-timers to use.

“We’re going to do a little research, but I expect to have them on the streets by the end of the year,” he said.

Harris said there are many benefits to the cameras.

“They speak for themselves,” he said. “We get a lot of response back from cases and investigations where testimony is taken. Everybody wants to have it backed up with their own version. They want to be able to see what happened and make their own conclusion. Our testimony sometimes doesn’t hold the weight that it used to. That weight is now put on these cameras. For transparency, it’s one of the best tools we can have.”

Many departments have begun to use the body cameras. Officers in the city of Washington are in the midst of a trial run with the cameras throughout at least the month of August.