No Body Worn Cameras for RCMP
Wednesday, December 7, 2016 @ 3:17 PM
Prince George, B.C. – The RCMP will not be issuing body cameras for officers to wear on duty, at least not yet.
The RCMP had conducted a feasibility study on adding Body Worn Cameras to the gear a Mountie must wear, but the RCMP say the available technology doesn’t meet its operational requirements. Specifically, the RCMP say “the current technology poses several challenges such as limited battery life and lack of camera durability.”
“As a modern police force, the RCMP recognizes the importance of constantly researching new equipment to be used in operational settings, and we will continue to assess new BWC technologies as they become available” said RCMP Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brosseau, Contract and Aboriginal Policing.
If the RCMP ever decide to make the move to body worn cameras, thousands of units would have to be purchased for distribution to 750 detachments “The RCMP needs to have confidence in the product and ensure that the choice of technology justifies the investment of tax payer’s money” reads a release from the RCMP.
Comments
Hundreds of other police organizations are using body cameras. Are there massive problems with these that we have not heard about? If not, how do the RCMP’s requirements differ so that none of the cameras used by other organizations are suitable for the RCMP?
I would be inclined to believe that what the Deputy Commissioner is stating is what has been force fed to him by the treasury department.
I totally agree! LOL
Could be. Interestingly, from the limited reading I have done, it appears, on the one hand, that costs are higher than I would have expected because the cost of cloud storage is quite high. The LAPD, for example, spends $US240 per year per officer for the cameras themselves but $1000 per year per officer for the cloud storage. On the other hand, many departments report a significant net savings due to a reduction in litigation costs and officer down time after shooting incidents.
Sure sounds like the RCMP don’t want body cameras. No problem finding a few hundred million for settling the female discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit but no money for cameras and software.
If you believe this give me a call if you are in need of a bridge.
lmorge: Nice to see you back on here. I for one have missed you. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Of Course they made this decision did you actually think anything else?
While I like the idea of body cameras they are very limited in scope and there are plenty of cases where officers wearing the cameras found them to be dead or having to change the batteries in too constant of a basis not to mention that often they do not catch critical information as they are pointed the wrong way or the mic isn’t working and so on
Not to mention buying up to 20,000 cameras is a huge cost that us tax payers would have to foot at average cost of 359 dollars per camera and cost of batteries
Someone else touched on it, but it needs to be expanded on. There would be a MASSIVE cost for storage, and you are talking about terabytes and terabytes of data. Thousands of officers, across the country, with 24hrs of hi def video to download every day? Who does the download? Where and how (for that matter, how long) is data stored? And then there are privacy issues as well. You walk into a restaurant and video captures everybody in the room, not just your subject. Does it record in the office when personal matters are being discussed? I saw another news article today that said the RCMP has paid out 1 Billion dollars in overtime since 2009 just to cover staffing shortages. Where is the money going to come for this now as well?
What I am hearing is……
We ant afford them or the pending court cases once we start using them.
The excuse is pathetic….
Wow… no shortage of hatred on here for our men and women in law enforcement. Way to jump on the american bandwagon.. because you know, there’s SO many unjustified shootings up here in Canada and all…
We wouldn’t want to believe anything they say or anything, so my suggestion is to go ahead and buy the cameras. Buy 2 for every officer, one facing front, one facing back. If the battery doesn’t last, buy more batteries or heck, more cameras! If durability is an issue and they break, buy more! That way we can shift our complaints to the wasteful spending and privacy issues. After all, what we really want here is something to complain about, right?
Since we believe the RCMP can’t be trusted, ever, then my suggestion is, as long as they don’t have body cameras, don’t call them. Deal with your problems yourselves. Otherwise, accept the fact that they’ve been around for over a century without body cameras and yet society hasn’t completely degenerated into anarchy. But then again, that’s probably just pure chance…
I think you must have missed the news but there have been quite a few cases here over the past few years of questionable shootings and other uses of force by the RCMP. That doesn’t mean that one should distrust the RCMP to the extent of not calling them, but even if most of the force can be relied upon, it is a problem if some members are prone to excessive use of force.
In any case, body cameras are not used for the sole purpose of recording or preventing police misconduct. They also provide evidence for the officer when he or she is falsely accused, and against the defendant if or she is acts in a threatening or criminal manner during the incident. Many police officers want cameras because they protect officers who behave correctly.
It is true that there are significant costs involved, that policies need to be developed regarding access, and that a system has to be designed for managing the data in a way that respects access restrictions and the chain-of-evidence and ideally integrates with other evidence management. If the RCMP were to say that further study of one or more of these issues was needed, I would find that plausible. Their position, however, appears not to be based on such considerations but rather that body cameras are not that helpful, and that I find highly dubious based on experience so far in the US and here in Canada.
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