April 10, 2025
PAUL KUEHNEL/USA TODAY NETWORK
Pennsylvania State Police have completed their statewide rollout of body cameras to all of the department's roughly 3,000 troopers.
More than 3,000 Pennsylvania State Police troopers will wear body cameras as part of a department-wide rollout that was completed Thursday, the agency said. The initiative also included updating video recorders in about 1,400 state police vehicles to allow wider perspectives to be captured by dashcams.
State police began implementing body cameras in 2023 as part of a $40 million program to bring the agency in line with other states and local police departments, which have increasingly made them a pillar of law enforcement accountability. The cameras used by state police require troopers to press a button to activate them.
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Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris said the cameras will strengthen public trust and provide transparency across the agency's 89 stations and 16 regional troops. The department's contract with Axon, the manufacturer of most body cameras used in the United States, includes infrastructure for documenting and storing footage from recordings.
State police retain all body-camera footage for a minimum of 180 days before it's deleted. Any footage used as evidence in court is held until all proceedings have been completed.
All of the troopers in Troop K, the state police unit that covers the Philadelphia region, had already received body cameras last year. The agency expedited the rollout in the city after a state trooper arrested former Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs Executive Director Celina Morrison and her husband last March for traffic violations on Interstate 76. Morrison filmed a portion of the incident, which showed a tense exchange with the trooper on the side of the highway. Critics claimed the investigation of the trooper, who left the agency two months after the incident, would have been aided by additional footage from a body camera.
Pennsylvania is not among the states that require all police officers to wear body cameras. In New Jersey and Delaware, they are mandatory.
The slow adoption of the technology by Pennsylvania State Police became contentious in June 2023 when a state trooper fatally shot 18-year-old Anthony Allegrini Jr. during a chaotic car meet on Interstate 95. Allegrini, of Glen Mills, was among a large crowd of people drag racing and doing stunts on the highway when police arrived, authorities said. The trooper shot Allegrini through the windshield of his car when the vehicle made contact with his and another trooper's legs.
Although the state police vehicle at the scene had a dash camera, the car was pointed toward a wall and the trooper who fired at Allegrini was not equipped with a body camera. Cellphone footage filmed by a witness showed Allegrini struggling on the ground outside his car after he was shot, raising questions about whether steps were taken fast enough to attempt to save his life.
Allegrini's parents pushed for the agency to speed up its rollout of body cameras, and the family filed a civil lawsuit against the trooper who fired his weapon. The incident remains under investigation by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, which declined to comment Thursday about the status of the case. Allegrini's father said body-cam footage would have offered a more complete picture of what happened. The family claims descriptions from bystanders and police are conflicting.
“We would know the full transparency of the actions of what took place,” Anthony Allegrini Sr. told the Delaware County Daily Times. “They weren’t wearing cameras, and we can’t see what happened.”
The Philadelphia Police Department started using body cameras in 2014 and is moving closer to have all officers equipped with them. About two-thirds of the department's roughly 5,700 officers had body cameras by 2023, and Mayor Cherelle Parker's proposed budget aims to supply the whole department with them by the end of 2025.
The cameras have helped document a number of high-profile incidents, including the fatal police shootings of Walter Wallace Jr. in 2020, T.J. Siderio in 2022 and Eddie Irizarry in 2023.
Despite the broader use of body cameras by Philadelphia police, an Axios analysis in 2023 found that most of the department's footage remains unmonitored. In the four-year period before the analysis, more than 1,000 officers were found to have violated the department's body-camera policies, including by failing to turn on cameras during public interactions.
Even with broader use of body cameras, Pennsylvania has a stringent process for obtaining footage. Requests must be submitted within two months of the relevant incident and people are required to disclose to police departments how they are connected to incidents. If police deny requests, appeals include a $125 fee and must be heard by a judge instead of going through the state's Office of Open Records.
State Sen. Lisa Baker (R), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Thursday she hopes to improve the state's laws around body cameras.
“I look forward to working with our law enforcement partners on our legislation to strengthen and consolidate our body-camera authorization laws," Baker said.
