The NYPD will expand citywide its pilot program of video-taping the interrogations of many suspects, The Post has learned.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is set to announce the expansion of a program the department started last year in an address at the Carnegie Council this morning.
“We believe there’s a growing expectation on the part of juries that interviews be recorded. Call it part of the ‘CSI’ effect,” Kelly says in prepared marks obtained by The Post.
The long-running crime procedural “has helped to fuel an assumption that these tools are a given in law enforcement.
“We want to continue to stay ahead of the curve with the help of our recording initiative,” Kelly will say.
Officers have recorded about 300 interviews so far in the pilot program, which covers felony assaults in four precincts in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
“While many of these cases are still in process, I can say that we’ve secured a number of early pleas after turning over a video confession to the defendants’ lawyers,” Kelly will say.
“Based on this experience we’re ready to move forward with this practice in all of our commands and to expand it initially to include murders and sex crimes.”
The technology will be installed in each of the city’s 76 precincts and videos will also be made in cases of murder and sex crime suspects.
The expansion, which was hailed by the New York State Justice Task Force that Kelly sits on, does not yet have a timetable.
As a nod to liberals who have been critical of the pilot program, Kelly will say the recordings are “in keeping with the aims of the Innocence Project, a national organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals.”
He also said the process “may help lessen the concern about false confessions.”
The expansion will be funded by the New York City Police Foundation, which raises private money for the NYPD, with Kelly seeking a $3 million grant for the first phase.