How BC’s Police Watchdog Plans to Use Body Camera Evidence

Starting this week, some Vancouver police officers will be wearing body cameras as part of a pilot program to test the equipment.

Body-worn cameras were first deployed in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s and have become common across the United States, starting with the New York City Police Department in 2013. The cameras are supposed to increase police accountability and public trust. In the United States, their widespread adoption has often been in response to complaints about racial bias in policing.

But the cameras have only recently been adopted in Canada, by the Toronto Police Service, the RCMP and now the Vancouver Police Department.

According to the VPD, 85 officers on patrol and working traffic enforcement will wear the cameras over a six-month period. The force says results from the trial “are expected to guide VPD through the development of a broader body-worn-camera policy for all officers.”

Body-worn cameras are controversial: critics have warned they aren’t effective in changing police culture, are very expensive and could lead to privacy violations.

While Vancouver’s mayor, Ken Sim, campaigned on promises to both hire more police officers and introduce body-worn cameras, their use in this city was also spurred by the 2023 coroner’s inquest into the death of Myles Gray.

In 2015, Gray died after being restrained and beaten in a confrontation with a total of 10 VPD officers. Several officers gave conflicting testimony about the incident during the inquest, and there were no video or non-police witnesses to the altercation.

The inquest came after a years-long probe by B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office, which investigates all cases of death or serious injury that may have been caused by the actions or inactions of police.

While the IIO submitted a report to the BC Prosecution Service recommending it consider charging the officers with manslaughter and assault, the service announced in 2020 it would not approve any charges.

Ron MacDonald, chief civilian director of the Independent Investigations Office, testified at the inquest that body cameras would have been helpful in the Myles Gray investigation. Several of the officers involved in the incident were designated as “subject officers” — meaning they could have been charged with a crime and therefore were not compelled to give evidence that could be used by the prosecution.

“Body camera evidence... would have helped us see what happened in that case — much more than just the witnesses we were able to speak to,” MacDonald said.

As the VPD starts its body-worn camera pilot, The Tyee spoke to MacDonald about how the footage might be used in future investigations. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: Has the Independent Investigations Office been involved in talking with the VPD about the pilot itself? Is the IIO involved in how that’s rolling out, or studying how it’s going to work?

Ron MacDonald: There is a body-worn cameras subgroup that is discussing, in general, body-worn cameras throughout the province of British Columbia. We do have a representative on that group.

One of the issues is, would officers be able to view body-worn camera footage prior to making notes? And our position on that with respect to IIO matters is that officers are not allowed to look at video prior to making notes or prior to giving us a statement.

When it comes to the VPD pilot, the only people who will be able to watch the video are the officer who was wearing the camera and other designated staff. Do you have concerns about that policy?

That policy, in our view, will have to give way to any direction that comes from us with respect to investigations that we’re doing that involve a use of force, or other type of action that leads to serious harm or death.

I think it is very important that the public of B.C. understand that because of the duty to co-operate as outlined in the Police Act, and the court decision from 2020 where the Court of Appeal said that the duty to co-operate is defined by the IIO, we have the ability to say to an officer who is going to be a witness in our investigation that they can't look at video prior to giving us a statement and prior to making notes.

Can you explain why it’s important to not allow police officers to view the video before making their notes about an incident?

There is a huge body of research that has demonstrated — and I think most people would understand this from a common-sense point of view — that once you view a video or a visual representation of an incident, it impacts your own personal memory.

It isn’t just what an officer sees during an incident that’s very important. It’s what they’re feeling, it’s what they have in their mind going into a circumstance, what they hear, what they see peripherally, which aren’t shown in the camera.

Do you have any thoughts about the policy guidance for when the camera has to be on and when it can be off?

As I understand it, the Vancouver policy is fairly consistent with the provincial policing standards on that point. They activate their camera as soon as it is safe and practicable to do so when attending a call or responding to an incident where there is a reasonable belief that there will be a use of force or where violent or aggressive behaviour is anticipated or displayed.

Some might suggest that it should be a lower standard if they suspect force is going to be used, because that way you'll capture more incidents. But there has to be a balance between the privacy of the individuals you’re dealing with and the desire to have video evidence of an incident that might occur.

Wellness checks, where police check on a person who could be in a mental health crisis, can be fairly uneventful or they can quickly go very wrong and lead to death or injury of people who are unable to obey police commands. When police are called to a wellness check, should they also be required to turn on their body cameras?

Certainly that’s a valid point of view. One could make that argument — that it's reasonable to believe that in any wellness check, it could result in a situation where violent or aggressive behaviour is anticipated. The standard may already capture that — how it’s applied on the ground will vary from officer to officer because humans have different perspectives.

That’s one of the reasons you have trial periods and that's one of the reasons that you can always revisit standards and policies and say, “You know what, we need to tweak this.”

In Vancouver, the policy will be that the person who's captured in a video can make a freedom of information request and they may be able to obtain the footage. But if the person dies in the incident, is there any stipulation that their family members can make a freedom of information request for the video?

If the person dies in the incident, it becomes an IIO matter. We have jurisdiction; we would seize the video as part of our investigation. And we do have a practice — depending on each case, and every case is different — that we will at times show video to families in the right circumstances.

We are embarking on an examination of our current practice and I want to develop policy that will give a little more structure around when we make such video available both to families to affected persons, and to the public in certain circumstances.

I recently read a ProPublica story about Alabama, where there is a lot of frustration from family members around accessing body camera footage. For those families, there was very little trust in the police or the judiciary to get answers about what happened. Do you think that British Columbians have enough trust in the IIO and the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner to allay those transparency concerns?

The circumstances in Canada and the U.S. are entirely different when it comes to the oversight of police action. Canada is so far ahead of the U.S. with respect to the use of civilian oversight, both for conduct and criminal investigations.

In the U.S., there is potentially only one body that I’m aware of that does independent criminal investigation of police. So that impacts trust greatly because when an incident happens in the U.S., everything falls to the police agency. And as we figured out in Canada some years ago, there’s a poor perception associated with police investigating police, and that’s why we have these independent civilian bodies.

Often Canadian reporters look enviously to the U.S. because they seem to release a lot of body camera footage very quickly. In Canada, that seems unlikely to happen. What are the pros and cons of allowing media to access video footage in cases where there are a lot of questions about what happened during an incident?

I think there should be more video released than is being released. This is something that we’re exploring at the IIO.

For example, in Ontario, there's a law that says that the province’s Special Investigations Unit has an obligation to release video.

Now, there are some issues with that. If it’s a case that we believe could wind up with the Crown for consideration of charges and then potentially in court, it’s really problematic to publicly release video because there are Charter rights of an accused person. If a state actor has effectively made their case in the public realm prior to a trial, that could be quite problematic and could impact the ability to successfully prosecute someone.

But if it’s not a case that's going to trial, I think there are more circumstances where we should be releasing video. I think that’s an important part of transparency and it's something that we're going to explore at the IIO. Hopefully we'll move toward it.