by Marty Green ·
Friday, March 27, 2026
Earlier this month Police Chief James Babu announced the Harvard Police Department has been awarded $127,716 through the state’s grant program for body-worn cameras. Harvard is one of 32 towns that received grants in this latest round of state funding for the cameras.
Announcing the grant, Babu wrote that the cameras will “support transparency, accountability, and stronger documentation of police interactions.” Local officers had input into the decision to acquire the cameras, Babu said in a later interview. The union was consulted, and he said all officers supported getting the cameras. While news reports sometimes focus on cases where body cameras reveal police misconduct, Babu pointed out the cameras can be equally useful in refuting unjustified complaints against officers. And those cases do not often make the news, because the complaints are then dropped.
Massachusetts does not have a state law requiring police to use body cameras, unlike eight other states. However, after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020, Massachusetts set up a Peace Officer Standard and Training (POST) Commission to reform police practices. The POST Commission created a task force to look into the use of body cameras, and that task force completed its report and recommendations in August 2022.
The task force report encouraged the use of the cameras and covered a range of issues, including what types of interactions should be recorded and how the recordings should be stored and handled. But by the end of 2025, only 190 out of 433 law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts had applied for state money to acquire cameras, according to a report by WBZ-TV. The most recent round of state funding will increase the number of those departments to just over half the local agencies.
In preparation for receiving the cameras, the Harvard Police Department has prepared a seven-page policy statement. It identifies situations in which the cameras should be used, such as all vehicle stops or pursuits, responses to 911 calls, prisoner transports, and more. Babu also said the cameras would always turn on when an officer drew a firearm or Taser.
The policy also advises officers that they can turn off the cameras in places where recordings would be “insensitive, inappropriate, or prohibited by privacy considerations.” Examples include locker rooms, hospitals, and day care facilities, among others.
Babu hopes to have the new cameras by August. The camera model will be the Axon 4, which has been in service since 2023 and is about half the size of a cellphone. However, in 30 months those cameras will be upgraded—at no additional charge—to a newer model, the Axon 5, according to an agreement with the company.
Regrettably, the body cameras will not have the live translation system that Harvard had hoped for. The translation feature works with 50 languages and would have been valuable, Babu explained, when an officer encountered a person who was not fluent in English. Babu had originally applied for about $160,000, but the state did not grant the full amount. The translation system costs approximately $31,000, so it had to be cut from the initial purchase. But it can be acquired later as an add-on, perhaps as a capital purchase by the town.