The BPS wants body cameras — are they worth it?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/08/2023 (283 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the Brandon Police Service has plans to push for equipping its officers with body worn cameras, a Brandon University professor has concerns about effectiveness of the devices and their promises of accountability and transparency.

Two years ago, BPS was set to purchase the cameras for its front-line officers in 2024, with $80,000 that had been put aside in the police service’s capital plan. Since then, the service has learned that more cash will be needed.

However, a $2.2-million budget boost from the province a few weeks ago will give BPS the funds needed to move forward with purchasing body cameras, BPS acting Chief Randy Lewis told the Sun this week.

“Recently, we’ve received some money from the province to increase public safety policing in the city of Brandon, and that’s going to give us an opportunity to properly fund that body worn camera program and make it more of a reality,” Lewis said.

The acting chief said that as part of his 2024 budget submission, he plans to ask the Brandon Police Board for approval to put some of the provincial funding toward the purchase of cameras, but he would not disclose the estimated cost.

Police board chair Debra Arpin told the Sun that the board has been presented with little information about body cameras so far, and declined to comment on whether the board would support the funding. She said she imagines that eventually the province will direct police forces to implement body cameras.

Details need to be worked out

But before Brandon police officers make their body cam debut, a number of details need to be worked out — cost, management of the video files, staff being hired to handle the files, and how to protect privacy.

Lewis said that BPS will not purchase the cameras until there is a successful bidder on the province’s tender for a cloud-based digital evidence management system. The province released the tender last week, and bidders have until the end of the month to apply.

The system would manage and share any digital evidence collected by law enforcement, which would allow police to share files more quickly with Manitoba prosecutors and help make criminal justice system processes more efficient, according to the tender.

This system would also manage the footage from body cameras, Lewis said.

Still, while an exact date hasn’t been determined for when exactly the cameras will be purchased, the acting chief said that he is a proponent of the cameras, despite their significant costs. Lewis said that he thinks one of the stronger arguments in favour of the cameras is for the protection of the force’s officers.

“The vast majority of complaints against police officers are found to be without any merit,” Lewis said. “And more often than not, our officers are acting exactly as they should.”

Lewis said that video footage of interactions with the public will speed up the review process of complaints against officers and save officers from having to testify in court as often.

“There’ll be more evidence gathered, which would lead to more guilty pleas by accused persons in court, which would lead to less court time for our officers to attend to when they’re on their days off,” Lewis said.

Brandon Police Association union president Earl Johnson agrees that body cameras will help resolve what he and Lewis call “frivolous” complaints against officers from the public.

“I think most people will think it’s a good thing, because it will protect the members,” he said. “Because our members are professional and they do their job as trained.”

While Johnson said that the association would support the police board if it decides to approve the funding for the cameras, he said that there are still logistical challenges that would need to be addressed.

He said that there would be costs associated with hiring more staff to handle the video footage that is gathered from the cameras. He also said policy surrounding privacy concerns, such as when an officer has to use the restroom, would need to be sorted out.

Johnson also added that while the camera does record a situation, it will still only captures one angle of an incident.

“It’s only a partial, it’s not a true rendition of what happens,” he said. “It’s only part of that information that is going to be seen.”

The RCMP have already begun field tests of body cameras in multiple detachments across RCMP divisions in Nova Scotia, Nunavut, and Alberta. After the field tests are completed, a national rollout will be a phased approach with the end result of equipping all general duty front-line RCMP officers with the cameras.

According to the RCMP website, body cameras “can help increase trust between police and the communities they serve because the video evidence collected will provide an independent, unbiased and objective way to capture interactions between the community and police officers.”

Cornwallis officer already wears one

Close to Brandon, the one-man police force in the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis, Chief Const. Darwin Drader, has worn a body camera since 2016. In an interview with the Sun, he said that he wholeheartedly recommends body cameras, even offering to buy the camera himself years ago. Ultimately, the RM of Cornwallis footed the US$300 bill at the time and Drader said that the camera augments his in-car video, which he has had since 2008.

“It’s something that I wouldn’t go on duty without,” he said.

Drader said that he hasn’t had too much resistance from the public about being on video, although he has had one person become very upset, in which Drader did turn his body camera off but made sure the interaction was still captured on his in-car video. In another instance, the chief constable said, someone said “hi” to their mother into his camera.

“The bottom line is, I keep telling [citizens] that this is not only for your protection, but it’s for my protection … it’s not going off,” Drader said.

Are the cameras worth the money?

The idea that body cameras will help protect police from citizen complaints and prevent police from engaging in brutality or misconduct, is an appealing one, Brandon University sociology professor Chris Schneider told the Sun.

But Schneider, who has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and op-ed articles on body cameras, said that the evidence on whether the devices actually accomplish those goals is inconsistent.

“Largely, police-worn body cameras have been rolled out on police services across North America [and] the world, on the basis of beliefs and assumptions about human behaviour — that it’s going to lead towards people acting correctly or accordingly,” he said.

Rolling out cameras on an idea of what people think they’ll do in the context of little evidence that the cameras actually accomplish those outcomes is a problem, especially given the cost to taxpayers, the professor said.

Schneider said that the body camera market is largely dominated by a few companies, Axon and Motorola, both of which stand to make much profit off of the devices, especially when large cities, like Toronto, spend millions of dollars per year for the purchase and maintenance of the equipment.

While a city like Brandon may not face costs quite that high, the BU professor warns the public against buying into the idea that body cameras will increase police transparency and accountability.

The police control the footage, he said, and while some of that may make its way into a public courtroom, body camera footage is rarely made publicly available in Canada. In other jurisdictions, Schneider said that when police release video footage, it is often footage that is favourable to police.

“What we’ve ended up seeing … is the police will release footage when it benefits their interests,” he said.

While the acting chief is set to ask the police board to put funds toward body cameras, for Schneider, the cameras bring up more issues and questions that should be discussed before thousands of dollars are spent.

“How are these things going to work? Do they work? What do we expect from them?” Schneider said. “The public are going to be sorely disappointed when either they become a victim of any sort of police misconduct, or there are accusations of police misconduct, [and] we don’t get access to the footage so we can’t see it.”

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

» X: @geena_mortfield