A $75,000 state grant will pay for police equipment, including body cameras, for the Allegheny Valley Regional Police Department.

The grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development will pay for traffic safety equipment and upgraded patrol car cameras that will synchronize with new body cameras, according to police Chief Mike Naviglia. Allegheny Regional covers Springdale Township and Cheswick.

Most local police and sheriff’s offices acquire body cameras to improve officer safety, increase evidence quality and reduce civilian complaints and agency liability, according to a 2016 report from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Such is the case with the Allegheny Valley Regional Police, Naviglia said.

“We wanted the body cameras mostly to protect police officers from false accusations,” he said.

The department is in the process of buying 10 cameras for its two full-time and eight part-time officers, Naviglia said. He expects that the upgraded patrol car cameras and body cameras will be operational by the end of the year.

“I think they are invaluable tools,” said West View police Chief Bruce Fromlak, president of the Western Pennsylvania Chiefs’ of Police Association.

“The trend is going to be that these cameras will be on every police officer in the future,” said Fromlak, who has worked in law enforcement for 35 years.

Nearly half of U.S. law enforcement agencies had body-worn cameras by 2016, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. In the same survey, about a third of sheriff’s offices and local police departments that didn’t have cameras said they were likely to consider acquiring them within the year.

West View is in the process of getting into a “lease to buy” agreement to obtain body cameras this year.

The cameras can diffuse a situation when people know they are being filmed, Fromlak said.

But the cameras do more when it comes to revisiting a police scene: “This tool enables us to give a clear picture, literally, of what happened,” he said.

Having the cameras often comes down to the cost, according to Fromlak, who is also West View’s borough manager. “You have to think about much money there is to pave a road as well,” he said. The going rate for the cameras is about $900 each, according to Fromlak.

Naviglia said his small department could not have afforded the cameras without the state grant.

But like any other innovation, over time, the cost of body cameras will go down as the technology gets better, Fromlak said.

Several police shootings sparked interest in police body cameras about five years ago, according to a recent report by the Pew Charitable Trust.

Viral videos of police shootings on social media websites propelled the Obama administration in 2015 to award more than $23 million in federal grants for law enforcement agencies of all sizes to buy body cameras, according to the Trust’s report.

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