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It’s your paper! Friday, June 8, 2018 • Vol. 5, No. 4 • Fitchburg, WI • ConnectFitchburg.com • $1
Inside
Fitchburg Police Department
Verona Road
May sees uptick in crashes at PD intersection Police: Crashes ‘tamed down’ after mid-month shift
Fitchburg Days photos Page 2
SCOTT GIRARD
City breaks ground on second new fire station
Unified Newspaper Group
Page 3 Fitchburg resident competing in Ironman 70.3 Page 10
Business Tapatios restaurant opens on Cahill Main Page 15
Photos by Kimberly Wethal
Sgt. Edward Hartwick has been part of a pilot program testing body cameras since January. The cameras, attached to the officers’ uniforms with a magnet, are expected to be worn by all Fitchburg officers by the end of the month.
The Third Eye
City preparing to have a body camera on every officer
Sports
KIMBERLY WETHAL
Edgewood boys golf repeats as D2 state champions
As Fitchburg police Sgt. Edward Hartwick flipped on the emergency lights on his squad car for a drug overdose investigation last week, he also needed to remember to flip on the body camera clipped halfway down his chest. Hartwick has been wearing the camera since January as a part of a Fitchburg Police Department pilot program aimed at putting one on each of the 48 officers in the department. After the department receives a final piece of equipment that will integrate the body cameras with the computers in their squads to review footage, it plans to roll out the full program – department leaders hope by the end of the month. Getting here has been a three-year process that police chief Chad Brecklin said has involved spending about $160,000 for 48 cameras and assorted equipment, getting buy-in from city leaders and feedback from citizens and an intradepartmental committee, putting together and testing a policy for how the cameras are used and how video footage is stored and released and testing it on a handful of
Unified Newspaper Group
Page B1
Schools VASD outlines boundary change timeline Page B7
PRSRT STANDARD ECRWSS US POSTAGE
‘The cameras are there to try to bring those things that people have felt have been behind-the-scenes for so long out into the forefront.’ – Chad Brecklin, Fitchburg police chief officers. For Hartwick, having the camera running during the June 1 overdose investigation was vital as he sifted through a cluttered passenger seat of the patient’s car while the man was loaded into the ambulance. The pills in the tall, skinny orange bottle Hartwick picked out from that seat weren’t the cause of the overdose – instead, they belonged to the driver of vehicle. But in situations where searches, arrests and restraints are conducted by police, having a body camera – an impartial third-person view, as Brecklin described it – allows for transparency in the day-to- The Panasonic body cameras can day interactions between officers and be linked to each car’s mobile data computer to enable quick reviewal of citizens. footage.
Turn to Cameras/Page 12
May featured the most significant traffic shift to date on Verona Road in Fitchburg, as crews routed both directions onto entirely different lanes from Raymond Road past Hwy. PD. The 12 accidents were the most at the Verona Road-PD intersection of any month in the past year, according to crime map data from the Fitchburg Police Department. “Any time you make a change in the lane or direction of travel, you’re gonna have problems,” FPD Sgt. Tom Schmitt said. “They’re gonna get confused.” Schmitt told the Star they “always expect crashes,” when changes are made during construction season – and especially on a major project like this – as people get used to their routes and often are driving with distractions. By now, though, three weeks since the May 18-20 changeover Schmitt said the confusion has “kind of run its course.” “People now I think are used to it,” he said. Of the 12 crashes in May at the intersection, there w e r e t wo t h a t S c h m i t t deemed “serious” incidents, one before the traffic switch and one after. On May 7, two people were hospitalized after a driver ran a red light while
Turn to Verona Road/Page 13
Inside What’s ahead for Verona Road Page 13
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