WATCH: The bystander who caught the fatal shooting of Walter Scott on video has come forward to tell the story of what he say. As Jackson Proskow reports, there are calls for police body cameras to be mandatory for all officers.
TORONTO – Body-worn cameras will be a new part of the uniform for each member of the North Charleston Police, as the force comes to grips with one of its members being caught on video gunning down 50-year-old Walter Scott.
Mayor Keith Summey made the announcement during a press conference Wednesday. The police force already had 101 cameras ordered, but will order another 150 to outfit every officer.
A video of the shooting played a key role in Michael Slager, the officer who shot Scott, being charged with murder. It differed widely from initial reports which suggested Scott was shot during a struggle for the officer’s Taser.
Body-worn cameras in Canada
The use of body-worn cameras has been spreading across North America after several recent shootings – some of which have been caught on camera, most notably in Canada, the shooting of Sammy Yatim. The Toronto Police Officer accused of shooting Yatim while he stood near the front doors of an empty streetcar was not wearing a body-worn camera but some bystanders, armed with cell phones, caught the incident on camera.
The Toronto Police are in the middle of a year-long pilot project. The project started in February and approximately 100 officers from across the city are currently in training to properly use the cameras. The cameras will go out into the community in May.
Vancouver police are awaiting a provincial policy before implementing their cameras but have tested them. Police in Calgary had a pilot project of 50 cameras in 2012 and are in the process of rolling them for all front-line officers in the coming months. The police force is still in the process of fielding bids and don’t know yet how much the implementation will cost. Winnipeg too is in the middle of a pilot program testing the cameras.
Do they work?
Preliminary research suggests they do. A University of Cambridge study released in December 2014 looked at how body-worn cameras affected police operations in Rialto, California. A randomly-selected group of officers were assigned to shifts with the cameras, and shifts without.
After 12 months, the study found the number of complaints filed against officers dropped from 0.7 complaints per 1,000 contacts to 0.07.
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“With institutionalised body-worn-camera use, an officer is obliged to issue a warning from the start that an encounter is being filmed, impacting the psyche of all involved by conveying a straightforward, pragmatic message: we are all being watched, videotaped and expected to follow the rules,” researcher Dr. Barak Arial said, according to the University of Cambridge website.
How much do they cost?
Costs vary but the cameras aren’t cheap. Spokane, Washington officials spent $730,000 in 2013 for 220 cameras, Tasers and three years of data management. The Los Angeles Police Department spent $1.3 million in Jan. 2014 for 600 cameras, including maintenance costs for 2.5 years.
Watchdogs worry about privacy concerns
Canada’s privacy commissioners have raised questions about the use of body-worn cameras, arguing police across the country need to strike a fine balance between recording their investigations and protecting the privacy of Canadians.
The federal privacy commissioner released a document in February laying out suggested guidelines for the use of body-worn cameras including notifying the public when they are being recorded, taking proper steps to safeguard the recordings, and blurring the faces of bystanders when the videos are shared with the public.
Calgary Police have yet to launch a comprehensive privacy policy but are planning on doing that when the cameras are rolled out.
The Toronto Police are closer to figuring out when the cameras will be turned on.
“Privacy has been our number one concern, not just internally, but obviously we recognize that’s the community number one concern as well,” Meaghan Gray, a spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service said.
Gray couldn’t give exact details about when the cameras will be turned on, but did say they won’t be turned on for the entire duration of the officer’s shift.
Videos of violent incidents
There’s no way of knowing whether a body-worn camera would have affected how the traffic stop which eventually led to Scott’s death would have played out. There have been videos of violent incidents involving police in the past that haven’t led to charges.
The Rodney King beating in 1991 was caught on camera much in the same way Scott’s shooting was – surreptitiously recorded by a bystander, with the police seemingly unaware the video existed. The four officers caught on camera were acquitted in a state trial though two of them were convicted in 1993 after the Justice Department filed federal civil rights charges.
And protests erupted across the United States in December after a Grand Jury decided not to charge a police officer caught on video choking Eric Garner on a New York City sidewalk while the man yelled “I can’t breathe.”
- With files from the Associated Press
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