Body cam questions need to be answered

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It’s a rare moment when Brandon and/or western Manitoba find themselves slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the policies and projects that tend to gravitate to Fortress Winnipeg.

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Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2023 (696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a rare moment when Brandon and/or western Manitoba find themselves slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the policies and projects that tend to gravitate to Fortress Winnipeg.

On Monday, a Winnipeg Free Press report noted that, while police officers in some Canadian cities already wear cameras on their uniforms, officers in Winnipeg have yet to be equipped with the technology.

This is in spite of strong support among decision-makers — including the Winnipeg Police Service, which has lobbied for them in the past. Yet as with so many such expensive innovations, the spirit is willing, but the funding is weak.

The Free Press reported that Winnipeg’s council approved a pilot project in 2015, but it was scrapped ahead of its 2017 start for budget reasons. When the matter resurfaced in 2021, council voted down a request to increase the WPS budget to purchase the technology.

And as Winnipeg begins anew the discussion surrounding the need for police body cameras, that same long-standing discussion here in Brandon — along with $2.2 million in cash from the previous Stefanson government announced earlier this year — prompted Acting BPS Chief Randy Lewis to plan for the purchase of police body cameras in his 2024 budget submission.

“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 told the Sun last August.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that body cameras will be forthcoming in the new year — merely that the chief of police thinks it’s an idea worth pursuing. Police board chair Debra Arpin was non-committal back in summer, as board members had little information before them upon which to make a decision either way.

It’s also true that cost remains a factor, even with the extra provincial cash. 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 — although it’s worth noting that Acting Chief Lewis had not disclosed the current asking price last August during his discussion with the Sun.

Still, the situation is similar in Winnipeg, where the purchase of body cameras has not been on the table for the last two years.

In 2021, a program to equip police with more than 1,300 cameras was expected to cost $7 million, with annual data storage costs of $4 million. At the time, Winnipeg City Council voted down a request to increase the WPS budget to outfit the force with the equipment.

Winnipeg criminal defence lawyer Scott Newman pointed out in a letter to the editor recently published by the Free Press that WPS vehicles are also without dash cams and interior cameras, while many other Canadian jurisdictions, including the federal RCMP, record both audio and video in police vehicles.

As a proponent of the technology, Lewis said that in spite of the cost, the cameras would go a long way to protect police from scurrilous accusations. 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, he said.

Ironically, western Manitoba is already home to an active police body camera. The one-man police force in the RM of Cornwallis, Chief Const. Darwin Drader, has worn one since 2016. In his comments to the Sun, he wholeheartedly recommended other police forces adopt the equipment, for their own protection, and for that of the public.

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

We should point out, however, that the use of body cameras only makes police more transparent if they want to be. Brandon University sociology professor Chris Schneider has warned before that the police control the footage, and that while some of that may make its way into a public courtroom, body camera footage is rarely made publicly available in Canada.

And when that video footage does happen to be released, he said that the footage tends to portray police in a favourable light.

“How are these things going to work? Do they work? What do we expect from them?” Schneider told the Sun in August. “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.”

We’re not against the purchase of new and better technology to avoid frivolous accusations against police. Such equipment should be duly considered. But officers, like every other member of the human race, are imperfect. We have seen this time and again in far too many other jurisdictions when poor decisions are caught on the camera phones of ordinary citizens.

There remain outstanding questions regarding police body cams that the public have a right to have answered, particularly video availability to members of the public and our courts. Both the need for greater police transparency and the cost to city residents should be considered by the police board and city council before considering their purchase.

» The Brandon Sun, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press

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