HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A police officer was killed and another was seriously injured Wednesday night when their cruiser was struck by a car speeding through a red light while fleeing a traffic stop in Connecticut’s capital city, authorities said. The driver of the car was arrested.
Officer Robert “Bobby” Garten, 34, an eight-year veteran of Hartford police whose father retired as a detective on the force, died from his injuries, police said. Officer Brian Kearney was seriously injured and was listed as stable at a local hospital. Other details of his condition were not disclosed.
“This is a devastating loss for our community, for our department, and our whole city is grieving this morning,” Mayor Luke Bronin said at a news conference Thursday. “Bobby loved this city. … He served this city with courage and compassion and tremendous skill and dedication.”
Police Chief Jason Thody said Garten was in the passenger’s seat and Kearney was driving the cruiser with its emergency lights and siren on as they responded to an unrelated call at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. Another car that had fled a traffic stop by other officers smashed into the passenger’s side of the cruiser just west of downtown Hartford.
The driver of the car, Richard Barrington, 18, of Hartford, was treated at a hospital, discharged and arrested, police said. He was charged with failure to obey a traffic control signal, failure to renew registration, misuse of plates and interfering with police. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could respond to the allegations.
Other officers had pulled over Barrington after he disobeyed a traffic signal and they checked his license plate, which showed the car’s registration had been canceled, Thody said. While officers approached the car, Barrington sped away, drove through one red light and went through another red light before crashing into Garten and Kearney’s cruiser, he said.
The other officers did not chase after Barrington when he fled the traffic stop, the police chief said.
Early Thursday morning, a procession of police transported Garten’s body from the hospital to the chief medical examiner’s office in Farmington. Gov. Ned Lamont later directed all state and U.S. flags in Connecticut to be flown at half-staff in Garten’s memory.
Garten grew up in nearby Wethersfield and enjoyed going to the now-defunct Hartford Whalers NHL hockey games as a kid and Hartford Yard Goats minor league baseball games as an adult, Bronin and Thody said.
Garten worked patrol walking city streets before joining the department’s street crimes unit two years ago, Thody said. The unit focuses on gun violence and taking firearms off the street, Thody said.
“I think if you ask anybody in the police department about him, they’ll say he was the guy that was always smiling,” Thody said. “Really loved the work when he got on the job. Was one of those officers that really wanted to excel and do different things. … He was a great man.”
Thody said state police are investigating the crash.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is asking members of the City Council who voted against adopting the state’s controlled substance law to consider an amended plan.
Harrell is offering a proposal that would align the city’s code with new state law, making possession and public use of drugs such as fentanyl, a gross misdemeanor. But it would also emphasize diversion and health programs, and spend $27 million to pay for opioid treatment and related facilities. Seattle saw a 72% increase in overdose deaths from 2021 to 2022.
The “announcements represent important steps forward toward a safer, healthier Seattle, as we continue to act with urgency to build out a bold health-first approach, help those in need, curtail impacts of public drug consumption, and hold dealers and traffickers accountable,” Harrell said in a statement Monday.
The City Council declined to adopt the new state law in a 5-4 June vote. Opponents said the law could result in harsher enforcement, especially for low-income people and people of color, and could revitalize the war on drugs.
Harrell’s plan comes after he appointed a task force — including City Council members and public safety experts — to further work on the measure for a month. The $27 million would come from settlement money the city received from opioid lawsuits, Harrell said.
The measure also informs police that “diversion, treatment, and other alternatives to booking are the preferred approach,” and instructs them to consider “whether the individual, through their actions and conduct, presents a threat of harm” to themselves or others before arrests are made on either charge, The Seattle Times reported. “This package is a balanced approach to respond to the crisis fentanyl has brought to our streets,” Councilmember Andrew Lewis said Monday in a statement.
“This legislation, that I will co-sponsor, responds to the needs I laid out at the beginning of this process and gives our first responders the tools they need to divert to services where possible and make arrests when necessary.” Lewis was the swing vote that caused the June measure to fail, KUOW reported.
The Washington law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee in May struck a balance between public order and compassion for people struggling with substance abuse, lawmakers said at the time.
Legislators had been under pressure to pass a bill this year because a temporary law that made intentional drug possession illegal was due to expire July 1. Unless the Legislature passed a new law, drug possession would have been decriminalized under state law.
The state law makes it a gross misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail for the first two drug possession offenses and up to a year after that. But police and prosecutors would be encouraged to divert cases for treatment or other services. The state measure provides $44 million for investments that include methadone mobile units, crisis centers and short-term housing for people with substance use disorders.
The temporary measure was approved by state lawmakers after the Washington Supreme Court in 2021 struck down as unconstitutional the state law making drug possession a felony because it did not require prosecutors to prove someone knowingly had the drugs. Washington was the only state in the country without that requirement.
Many questions remained Sunday about what led a gunman in Fargo, North Dakota, to open fire on police officers as they were responding to a traffic crash. One officer was killed and two others were critically wounded before the gunman was killed by a fourth officer.
The shooting happened Friday afternoon along a busy street, and roughly nine hours passed before authorities told the public that officers were shot. On Saturday, Fargo’s police chief released the names of the officers and the name of the gunman, but he said the motive was unclear and that the 37-year-old man opened fire for “no known reason at all.”
Chief Dave Zibolski also said little about how the situation unfolded, noting the investigation was in the hands of state and federal investigators.
“We are not in the position to provide many details in terms of the actual incident itself,” Zibolski said. Authorities released no new information Sunday.
Here’s what we know, and what we don’t, about the shooting:
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE SCENE?
Police and fire officials were responding to a routine traffic accident on a busy street Friday afternoon when a gunman began firing multiple rounds at them — killing one and wounding two, Zibolski said. A fourth officer shot and killed the man, who authorities identified as Mohamad Barakat of Fargo.
Zibolski described the first few minutes as “very chaotic,” but he said that firefighters on scene and a nearby ambulance were essential in preventing additional fatalities. As soon as the firing stopped, “firefighters bounced out and they were applying first aid immediately to our officers,” Zibolski said, which “probably had a very significant impact on their survival.”
Authorities released few details about what happened in the moments before Barakat began firing, and his motive was not clear.
“The first thing we always want to know in a situation like this is, ‘Why?’ ” Zibolski said. “Why would somebody do this?”
WHAT DID WITNESSES SEE?
Among the drivers who witnessed what happened was Chenoa Peterson. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that a man appeared to have ambushed the officers. The gunman was at the rear of a car in a bank parking lot near the traffic crash when he fired on an officer not more than 20 feet (6 meters) away, she said.“He was holding up the trunk of the car with his arm, and then I see the gun come up, and he set it on his shoulder and just pointed it directly at an officer in front of him,” Peterson said. “It was like 10 shots right away.”
Officers weren’t looking in the direction of the gunman when he began shooting, she said.Peterson’s 22-year-old daughter was with her and said the suspect exchanged simultaneous gunfire with police.
“I saw them firing at each other both at once,” Katriel Peterson said. “But soon as the shooter took a break, the cop came walking towards him letting off round after round. There was already an officer down. And a family hiding just on the other side of the vehicle next to the shooter.”
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE FALLEN OFFICER?
Officer Jake Wallin, 23, was killed. Zibolski said Saturday that his wounds were fatal, and “there was nothing that could be done.”
A military veteran, Wallin served in the Minnesota Army National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq from November 2020 to July 2021, according to a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard.“His death is a loss to our military family,” said Army Maj. Gen. Shawn Manke, the Minnesota National Guard’s adjutant general. “We are grateful for his commitment to others even in the face of danger.”Wallin was sworn in as a Fargo officer in April, Zibolski said.
“He served his country, came back here and wanted nothing more but to serve in a position with purpose and meaning – his exact words — and he did that,” Zibolski said.
Zibolski spoke to his sense of humor and his excellence throughout training, calling him a member of the department family.
In video played at a Saturday news conference showing Wallin training with fellow recruits, he spoke of his desire to pursue a career in law enforcement.“
Throughout my entire life, I’ve always wanted to work in some sort of position that had purpose behind my job, and police officer is always what kind of came to me,” said Wallin of St. Michael, Minnesota,. “I don’t want to be sitting in an office wondering why I’m here every day. I want to be out. I want to be doing something that I can tell myself at the end of the day I made a difference somehow.”
Funeral arrangements have not been made public. The governor has ordered that flags be flown at half-staff on the day of Wallin’s interment.
HOW ARE THE OTHER VICTIMS?
Two other officers, Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes, were in critical but stable condition as of Saturday, and Zibolski said they were in “good spirits” but had significant recovery ahead of them. No update on their conditions was provided Sunday.
Wallin and Hawes were both young recruits, sworn in less than three months earlier and still in training when they responded to the scene. Dotus was a six-year veteran who was responsible for training officers.
A fourth officer, Zach Robinson, shot and killed Barakat, Zibolski said. As is Fargo Police Department procedure, Robinson was placed on paid administrative while state authorities complete an investigation into his use of force, spokesperson Katie Ettish said.
A 25-year-old female bystander also was injured in the shooting, though authorities haven’t said who shot her. A hospital spokesman said Sunday that she was in fair condition.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD?
Shortly after the shooting, authorities, including the FBI, converged on a residential area about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away and evacuated residents of an apartment building to gather what they said was related evidence. Court documents that would indicate what authorities were looking for have not been made public. Authorities have said little about that search, other than to say it was happening at the time.
On Saturday, investigators were still at the apartment building, going back and forth from the third floor, where police tape hung across a hallway. Few residents were around, and an FBI truck was out front.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SUSPECT
The city also has said little about Barakat or the gun he used. Zibolski said he believed police previously had some sort of contact with Barakat “but not anything significant.”
Zibolski said it does not appear that Barakat was involved in the car crash that brought officers to the scene. But he indicated investigators are determining whether this was a planned ambush of officers.
Zibolski said he was confident authorities would eventually understand Barakat’s motive and that the information would be made public at the appropriate time.
PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that an Arizona law limiting how close people can get to recording law enforcement is unconstitutional, citing infringement against a clearly established right to film police doing their jobs.
FILE – Phoenix Police stand in front of police headquarters on May 30, 2020, in Phoenix, waiting for protesters marching to protest the death of George Floyd. A federal judge has ruled that an Arizona law limiting how close people can get to recording law enforcement is unconstitutional, citing a clearly established right to film police doing their jobs. The ruling Friday, July 21, 2023 from U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi permanently blocks enforcement of the law that he suspended last year (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi permanently blocks enforcement of the law that he suspended last year.
The Republican-backed law was signed by former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in July 2022 but enthusiasm for the restrictions faded and legislators refused an opportunity to defend the law during an initial court suspension. Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh, who sponsored the measure, has said he was unable to find an outside group to defend the legislation.
The law would have made it illegal to knowingly film police officers 8 feet (2.5 meters) or closer if the officer tells the person to stop. And on private property, an officer who decides that someone is interfering or that the area is unsafe could have ordered the person to stop filming even if the recording was being made with the owner’s permission.“
The law prohibits or chills a substantial amount of First Amendment protected activity and is unnecessary to prevent interference with police officers given other Arizona laws in effect,” Tuchi ruled.
A coalition of media groups and the ACLU successfully sued to block the law. Prominent law enforcement officials refused to defend the law, including former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and both the prosecutor and sheriff’s office in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix.
Bystander cellphone videos are largely credited with revealing police misconduct — such as with the 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers — and reshaping the conversation around police transparency. But Republican Arizona lawmakers initially said the legislation was needed to limit people with cameras who deliberately impede officers.
The Associated Press filed a friend of the court brief urging Tuchi to block the law from being enforced. The AP’s attorneys said that photographers especially could be caught up while covering rallies, where it could limit their ability to capture the full interactions between police and protesters.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Two men have died in a shooting in a downtown restaurant in the Polish city of Poznan, local police said Sunday.A spokesman for Poznan police, Andrzej Borowiak, said the incident took place in the hotel restaurant garden on St. Martin street, in Poznan Old Town, an area popular with tourists.
Borowiak said one of the two men was killed on the spot while the other died in hospital. The men were Poznan residents, aged 30 and 31.
He said police are “sure” that one of the men was responsible for the incident and are trying to find out what was the connection between the two.
Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper reported witnesses saying the one man shot the other and then shot himself. The daily did not identify the witnesses.
WHITEMARSH TOWNSHIP, Pa. (AP) — A freight train derailment in southeast Pennsylvania early Monday spurred precautionary evacuations, but officials said no injuries were reported and there was no known hazard to the public.The 40-car CSX train, which was operating on tracks owned by Norfolk Southern, derailed around 4:50 a.m. in a wooded area Whitemarsh Township. CSX said at least 16 cars went off the tracks, but local officials later said 15 cars had derailed.
Barren Hill Fire Police block a local intersection after a train derailment on Monday morning, July 17, 2023. (Alexandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)
Twelve nearby homes were evacuated shortly after the derailment was reported “out of an abundance of caution,” Whitemarsh Township Police Chief Christopher Ward said. Those residents were allowed to return to their homes around 9:30 a.m.
Silicone pellets leaked from at least one train car, Whitemarsh police said, but they posed no risk to the public. Among the other derailed cars, five contained urea, a liquid fertilizer, and another had tetrachloroethylene, which is used as a dry cleaning agent and metal degreasing solvent. At least two other cars were empty.
The cause of the derailment was under investigation, but a CSX spokesperson said it may have been “weather related.”
Norfolk Southern — and the entire rail industry — has been under intense scrutiny since one of its trains derailed and caught fire in February in Ohio, creating towering black smoke, forcing evacuations and raising environmental worries.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Two firefighters in Alabama were shot on Wednesday while on duty at a fire station, authorities said.
Investigators believe the Birmingham firefighters were targeted, though they do not have an exact motive, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond told news outlets. At least one of them was shot multiple times. They remain in serious condition at a hospital.“Our firefighters are there to protect and aid and rescue our citizens and to see them critically injured is troubling, disheartening,” Thurmond said.
The shooter entered the station through an open bay door, Thurmond said. At least one other firefighter was in the station during the attack and was not hurt.
The shooting happened just after the two firefighters who were wounded started their shifts.
The U.S. Coast Guard says a missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board.
This photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows a submersible vessel named Titan used to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic. In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes searched Tuesday, June 20, 2023, for the submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP)
Coast Guard officials said during a news conference Thursday that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which has been missing for several days. Debris found during the search for the vessel “is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District.
“The outpouring of support in this highly complex search operation has been great appreciated. Our most heartfelt condolences go out to the friends and loved ones of the crew,” Mauger said.
OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement that all five people on board, including company CEO Stockton Rush, are believed to be dead. Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet “have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.
OceanGate did not provide details when the company announced the “loss of life” in a statement or how officials knew the crew members perished. The Titan’s 96-hour oxygen supply likely ended early Thursday.
OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.
The Titan was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic — but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. And it’s not known if they survived since the sub’s disappearance.
Rescuers have rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard said an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot with cameras, lights and arms also joined the operation.
Authorities have been hoping underwater sounds might help narrow their search, whose coverage area has been expanded to thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep. Coast Guard officials said underwater noises were detected in the search area Tuesday and Wednesday.
Jamie Pringle, an expert in Forensic Geosciences at Keele University, in England, said even if the noises came from the submersible, “The lack of oxygen is key now; even if they find it, they still need to get to the surface and unbolt it.”
The Titan was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the iconic ocean liner sank more than a century ago. OceanGate Expeditions, which is leading the trip, has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.
By Thursday morning, hope was running out that anyone on board the vessel would be found alive.
Dr. Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, emphasized the difficulty of finding something the size of the submersible, which is about 22 feet (6.5 meters) long and 9 feet (nearly 3 meters) high.
“You’re talking about totally dark environments,” in which an object several dozen feet away can be missed, he said. “It’s just a needle in a haystack situation unless you’ve got a pretty precise location.”
Broadcasters around the world started newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.
Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said a day earlier that authorities were still holding out hope of saving the five passengers onboard.
“This is a search-and-rescue mission, 100%,” he said Wednesday.
Retired Navy Capt. Carl Hartsfield, now the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds detected have been described as “banging noises,” but he warned that search crews “have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential manmade sources other than the Titan.” Frederick acknowledged Wednesday that authorities didn’t what the sounds were.
The report of sounds was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersible’s hull to be detected by sonar.
The U.S. Navy said in a statement Wednesday that it was sending a specialized salvage system that’s capable of hoisting “large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.”
The Titan weighs 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilograms). The U.S. Navy’s Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is designed to lift up to 60,000 pounds (27,200 kilograms), the Navy said on its website.
Lost aboard the vessel is pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate. His passengers are: British adventurer Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
In the first comments from Pakistan since the Titan vanished, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Thursday that officials have confidence in the search efforts.
“We would not like to speculate on the circumstances of this incident and we would also like to respect the wishes of the Dawood family that their privacy be respected,” she said.
At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.
“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
During the 2 1/2-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.
The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10 1/2 hours.
The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.
Nick Rotker, who leads underwater research for the nonprofit research and development company MITRE, said the difficulty in searching for the Titan has underscored the U.S.’s need for more underwater robots and remotely operated underwater vehicles.
“The issue is, we don’t have a lot of capability or systems that can go to the depth this vessel was going to,” Rotker said.
Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.
“Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen. With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.”
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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Danica Kirka in London; and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
MONTREAL (AP) — The hazardous haze from wildfires in Canada’s northeast eased there and throughout much of northeastern United States on Friday, but Canadian officials warned it could be a marathon fire season and welcomed the help of firefighters arriving from other countries.
American flags fly with a cloudy sky above the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Friday, June 9, 2023. While the air quality remains unhealthy, the record smoke pollution from wildfires in eastern Canada this week has diminished significantly over the nation’s capital. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
A contingent of 100 French firefighters landed in Canada and was en route to the fire region Friday. Hundreds more are expected to arrive from the U.S., Portugal and Spain in the coming days, and there should be about 1,200 people fighting fires in the province of Quebec by Monday, said Public Security Minister François Bonnardel.
The thick wildfire smoke that loomed over daily life this week for millions of people in Canada and parts of the U.S. East Coast has mostly dissipated, U.S. and Canadian officials said.
“We’re doing a lot better,” U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Putnam said. “It looks like there is less smoke being produced in in Canada.”
He said the weather pattern seems to be the same, but there is less smoke.
Maïté Blanchette Vézina, Quebec’s minister of forests and natural resources, said the situation in the province remains critical but is improving.
The province’s forest fire prevention agency said the additional firefighters is a sign “the sprint phase has ended and we’re now in the marathon phase,” she told a Quebec City briefing.
Blanchette Vézina said efforts in the coming days will permit firefighters to contain and begin extinguishing some of the roughly 140 fires that remained active across Quebec on Friday, including some that have been allowed to burn freely due to a lack of personnel.
She said the improved situation is also allowing the province to lift the ban on activities in the woods in most of the Côte-Nord and parts of the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean regions, although forestry work and all forms of fires are still prohibited.
As of Friday, the fires had forced more than 13,500 Canadians from their homes, many of them in the northern municipalities of Chibougamau and Lebel-sur-Quévillon. About 50 people were also evacuated from a detention center in Amos, Quebec, as a preventive measure, Bonnardel said.
Despite the stabilizing situation, Bonnardel said it was likely many of the evacuees wouldn’t be able to return home before next week.
He announced the province would offer $1,500 Canadian (US$1,224) to each household that was evacuated and would fully reimburse affected municipalities for the costs they incurred to run shelters, manage evacuations and fight fires.
Quebec’s forest fire prevention agency has described the current wildfire season as the worst on record. The province has reported a total of 444 wildfires so far this year, compared to an average of 207 at the same date during prior years.
Experts says the wildfires have been fueled by an unusually dry and warm period in spring, and no rains are expected until next week.
Canadian officials say there have been no reports of injuries and deaths so far from the fires.
In Nova Scotia, meanwhile, most evacuation orders were lifted Friday, almost two weeks after a series of unprecedented wildfires broke out in the southwestern corner of the province and in suburban Halifax.
Officials in Shelburne County, where the largest wildfire in the province’s history continued to burn out of control, lifted all evacuation orders at noon. The wildfire there, which started May 27 near Barrington Lake, hasn’t grown since the weekend thanks to the work of firefighters and the wet, cool weather.
The Barrington Lake fire forced more than 6,000 people from their homes and destroyed 60 homes and cottages, as well as 150 other structures.
Wildfire smoke that hung over Toronto for several days has now cleared, resulting in a notable improvement in air quality for Canada’s most populous city, but the haze is persisting in western Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and parts of British Columbia.
“City of London Police is dedicated to ensuring London is a safe and attractive destination, and the body-worn camera roll out will help our officers continue to serve and protect those who live in, work in and visit the city,” said Superintendent Neal Donohoe, City of London Police. “The new video technology will capture valuable incident footage that provides an objective record to promote transparency and accountability while also helping to keep our officers and communities safe.”
Known for its modern approach to policing, the City’s police force relies on advanced technologies to maintain safety and security throughout London’s bustling Square Mile which hosts around 8,000 residents and 513,000 transient commuters who travel in and out of the City each day. The new VB400 body-worn cameras will integrate seamlessly with the police force’s existing ecosystem of technologies to maximize end-to-end safety, security and productivity. Collaboration with the Pronto mobile digital policing platform will align video footage with other incident report information and connectivity with a wide range of sensors will automate recording when critical events occur, such as an officer pressing the emergency button on theirMXP600 TETRA portable radio.
Designed to streamline an officer’s workflow, after a shift, officers simply place the VB400 into its dock where it will automatically upload footage of the day’s events into VideoManager evidence management software. VideoManager will store the data in-country and organize it with time, date and location details along with supporting incident data reported by officers.
“We’re proud to support City of London Police with an ecosystem of public safety technologies that help officers form a more complete picture of everything that’s happening around them,” said Fergus Mayne, country manager for U.K. and Ireland at Motorola Solutions. “Ultimately, clear and timely information helps them to work more efficiently and make better-informed decisions, leading to better safety and security outcomes for all.”
This is the latest in a series of Motorola Solutions’ body-worn camera deployments both within law enforcement and enterprises globally, including French Gendarmerie and National Police, London Ambulance Services, Malta Police, U.K.’s National Highways and rail operators, MetrôRio and Swedish Rail.
About Motorola Solutions
Motorola Solutions is a global leader in public safety and enterprise security. Our solutions in land mobile radio communications, video security and the command center, bolstered by managed & support services, create an integrated technology ecosystem to help make communities safer and businesses stay productive and secure. At Motorola Solutions, we’re ushering in a new era in public safety and security. Learn more at www.motorolasolutions.com.
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