With about 30 of the 4,300 Pennsylvania State Police troopers set to begin testing body cameras next year, the time is ripe to revisit the Commonwealth’s deplorable lack of access to police records, and urge both state lawmakers and the agency to make much-needed changes.

The issue doesn’t begin or end with police video footage, either. The agency needs to jettison its counterproductive policy when it comes to fatal police shootings as well.

State police are currently trying to derail a grand jury investigation in Northhampton County into how the agency investigates shootings by troopers.

Perhaps the PSP lawyers are legally correct when they assert that the grand jury doesn’t have the authority to weigh in on how the agency investigates line-of-duty shootings. That’s a complex issue that can only be addressed in court.

But it doesn’t change the fact that state police shouldn’t be investigating themselves. And the agency’s position on the matter — that their protocols “ensure each trooper-involved shooting is investigated thoroughly and transparently” — is patently ridiculous.

We have no reason to doubt that PSP is thorough. But transparent? Give us a break.

The fact is that state police withhold details of trooper-involved shootings and the conclusions of their internal investigations for years — even from the families of those killed in such incidents.

We were recently reminded of this fact by a Tribune-Review report that detailed PSP’s response to the newspaper’s Right-to-Know request asking for details on all the trooper-involved shootings in southwestern Pennsylvania between 2014 and this past July.

The paper reported that the agency’s response only included the dates of each shooting, which PSP troop was involved and general information about why the trooper fired their weapon. State police denied requests for the names of troopers involved, the person who was shot, the outcome of any internal investigation, and any video footage related to the incidents.

The agency wouldn’t even confirm whether the shootings were, in fact, fatal.

The notion that PSP is transparent became even more ridiculous last month, when Pennsylvania enacted a law that allows troopers to record audio and video inside homes — a practice that was previously prohibited. Once PSP rolls out the body cams, that same law also allows them to treat footage from them the same way the agency currently handles footage from troopers’ dashboard cameras.

That is to say: they’re allowed to unilaterally deny the public access to the footage by simply claiming it’s part of an active investigation, and then continue withholding the footage from the public even after the investigation is closed.

As we’ve said before, this completely defeats the purpose of troopers gathering video footage in the first place. What good is an objective record of events when it’s not available to the public?

Objectivity, accountability and transparency are not dirty words. They are precepts that help ensure justice is served, strengthen the ties and the trust between police and the communities they serve, and ultimately keep officers safer in the field.

Lawmakers and law enforcement officials who accommodate and promote secrecy with respect to police records and practices aren’t doing police agencies a favor. They’re making officers’ jobs more difficult and dangerous.