Bristol Police Turn Forfeited Cash Into Cameras For Cruisers

By Nik Brown CM
Production Coordinator
Published: October 1, 2008

BRISTOL, Va. – Money forfeited by a drug manufacturer convicted of falsely promoting OxyContin is helping the city’s Police Department upgrade the technology in its patrol cars.

More than $70,000 – which came from the office of city Commonwealth’s Attorney Jerry Wolfe – was used to buy 14 in-car digital video cameras.

The cameras are designed to provide officers with high-quality video that is easily archived and recovered, making it ideal evidence for prosecutors in cases that occur in or around a police car, such as driving under the influence or vehicles that run from police, according to a news release from the Police Department.

Wolfe’s office received a share of the money because they assisted the federal government when it was prosecuting drug-maker Purdue Pharma in 2007. In May of that year, Purdue Pharma officials pleaded guilty in federal court in Abingdon to misbranding the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin.

As part of the settlement, the drug company and three of its former top executives doled out $634.5 million to resolve a host of criminal and civil charges.

According to Wolfe, $1.34 million of that money was funneled from the federal government to his office for the assistance it provided during the investigation and subsequent trial.

“They had taken some of their folks and put them working on nothing but this Purdue Pharma case, so they borrowed an assistant from our office and assistant from Tazewell to handle a lot of their regular cases,” Wolfe said.

“The feds contacted my office after it was all over with and said, ‘We’re gonna share one half of 1 percent of this for loaning us one of your assistants while we were doing this,” Wolfe said.

According to the commonwealth’s attorney, the cameras are the first major purchase with the money, which must be spent on law enforcement.

The cameras can tilt to point inside or outside the car and begin recording automatically when the cruiser’s patrol lights are activated. Officers can also manually start and stop the camera by using buttons on the dashboards and on their belts.

Before the purchase, the department had six digital cameras installed in patrol cars and two others that record to tape. “They absolutely love the cameras,” said police Capt. Darryl Milligan. “It makes their jobs a lot easier, it makes the commonwealth’s attorney’s job a lot easier. For example, in prosecution you can see what happened. As the officer described what happened, you can see what happened.”

The equipment was ordered from a Kansas-based surveillance company and has arrived, but still must be installed.

The new equipment means all but two patrol officers will have an in-car video system. The department hopes to have a camera system in every car by next year, Milligan said.

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