The Belleville Police Service is now most of the way through the first 30 days of its 90 day pilot project for body-worn cameras for front line officers.
Belleville Police Deputy Chief Chris Barry provided an update on the pilot, which began November 1, at Thursday’s Belleville Police Services Board meeting.
Barry said that police provided an internal survey for officers and public survey for residents on the topic that yielded positive results.
According to the survey, of 38 responses from BPS officers, approximately 15% were strongly in favour of the body-worn cameras, approximately 43% were in favour, approximately 34% were neither in favour or opposed and approximately 8% were strongly opposed.
Barry noted that 79% of the 463 respondents to the public survey for the community were in support of Belleville Police officers wearing body cameras.
He said that in consultation with other police services who have initiated a similar pilot, they often found that some officers who are initially in strong opposition of the cameras end up later being strong supporters of the concept.
Barry also said that, as part of the training for the cameras, police are instructed on what times are appropriate for an officer to turn off the camera and that when doing so they need to state the reason out loud to be heard before the footage is cut.
He said they drew on the experiences of other police departments including St. Thomas, Barrie, Metro Toronto and even as far as Calgary.
When asked about what he’s heard from officers so far Barry said it was working well with the young police force in Belleville.
“With our officers, we have a very young police service. We’ve had a tremendous amount of hiring over the last several years, in fact, I think I quoted a few months ago in the last six years our front line has turned over 70%. We have a lot of young people that are very anxious to utilize technology and access any tools they can. This is just one component of what we’re trying to do to get them some extra tools in their tool belt.”
Barry said it’s early yet to be able to tell the results of the pilot so far, but he said one of the most valuable components is aiding in court cases in being able to provide video evidence of interactions and it also aids SIU investigations that involve officers.
The pilot program can be re-upped at the end of the 90 days but Barry said that it’s too early to tell if they will or not.
