Beginning this week, the patrol's new fleet of Dodge Intrepid cars will be equipped with digital video cameras as part of a grant-funded pilot program, Capt. Bob Anderson said.

Switching to the new technology will eventually allow dispatchers and supervisors to view squad-car video feeds in real time.

"We have an officer down, we can turn a camera on remotely and see where the officer is," Anderson said.

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, VHS video cameras were installed in patrol cars to capture traffic incidents on tape. The technology is particularly useful in high-speed pursuits and drunken-driving cases because it provides virtually irrefutable evidence. The tapes also help reduce police officers' liability and are as effective as a training tool.

Digital video cameras will serve that same function but also will allow transmission or receiving of real-time video.

A dispatcher, for example, could watch a trooper's high-speed pursuit as it happened.

The highway patrol is following the lead of police departments in cities such as Philadelphia and Seattle that already have begun using the technology on a large scale.

In Seattle, the cameras were installed in 2001 as part of a pilot program in response to community concerns about police accountability. The city now has 80 patrol cars fitted with the digital cameras.

Anderson said 37 of the Utah Highway Patrol's 480 cars have been equipped with the $5,200 L-3 Communications Mobile-Vision digital camera systems. The cost is covered in part by $110,000 in federal grants.

Besides increasing officer safety, the digital cameras could help solve crimes more quickly, Anderson said. A trooper, for example, could use the camera to transmit images of a suspect, allowing troopers in other locations to see the person and help capture him or her.

The cameras can also be programmed to record on a continuous loop that erases after 60 or 90 seconds, Anderson said. It begins to save images when activated to record by the officer either from inside the car, by flicking on the emergency lights, or by the impact of a collision.

Because of the loop recording, the 60 seconds of image recorded prior to activation also is saved.

The information is stored on a memory card, which is less prone to damage in a car accident than a videocassette, Anderson said. At the end of their shifts, troopers will pop out the memory cards and move the data onto computer hard drives.

Integral to transmitting the real-time video is a high-speed wireless Internet "mesh network.''

In late June, the highway patrol will install two antennas along Interstate 15 in Salt Lake County, each site providing wireless Internet access to troopers within a four- to six-mile range, Anderson said.

Eventually, the patrol wants to extend the mesh network to include all of Interstate 15, as well as I-215.

Other police agencies would have the ability to tap into the wireless network.

The Murray Police Department, for example, has already fitted 10 of its 37 patrol cars with digital video cameras, which could someday be used to transmit real-time video, Murray Detective Rob Hall said.

"It's something we'd certainly like to have, but it all comes down to money," he said.

lrosetta@sltrib.com