Vancouver police pilot with body-worn cameras launching in January

A number of frontline Vancouver police officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras (BWCs) starting in January — an important safety and accountability tool, according to supporters of the six-month pilot program.

The force sent out a social media post on Friday, alerting members of the public to the increased presence of cameras and of two virtual townhall meetings this month where it will hear feedback and answer questions.

“Having these cameras is a way to strengthen our trust within the community and have accountability for police officers as well,” Const. Tania Visintin told Global News.

“Our officers have discretion when to turn them off, for example, if they’re places of worship, hospitals or situations where people aren’t fully clothed. There is discretion there to uphold members of the public and their privacy.”

The Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD) website states that officers may be seen with the cameras as early as this month in the downtown core, in East Vancouver and in the Traffic Services Section.

The goal is for the six-month pilot program to provide information that will lead to an eventual rollout for all frontline officers. Public feedback townhalls will be held on Dec. 11 and 14.

Last year, Vancouver’s mayor and council green-lit the BWC initiative, hoping for full implementation by 2025. The motion did not outline any privacy policy or regulations to accompany the cameras, which would record both video and audio.

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Provincial government standards, however, dictate that prior to the deployment of such cameras, a police board must ensure a privacy impact assessment has been completed and approved by the appropriate authorities. Information on the cameras, and the circumstances under which they may be used, must also be made public.

Any video collected must also be stored with restricted access and not altered at any time. Footage may only be retrained for one year from the date it was recorded, then it must be deleted, the policing standards state.

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The VPD pilot’s guidelines specify that the program’s purpose is not “indiscriminate recording,” but to “capture specific police interactions with the public.”

All officers equipped with the cameras must undergo the required training, log in their shift notebooks that they have deployed with a camera, and make “reasonable efforts to ensure that persons being recorded are informed as soon as practicable,” unless informing them would pose a safety risk.

“The VPD recognizes that persons in vulnerable circumstances may require additional explanation or notification to ensure they are aware that they are being recorded,” the guidelines state.

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The document further specifies the cameras will be automatically turned on if paired with an officer who draws their firearm or conducted energy weapon from their holster, and also has automatic activation sensors. Using “stealth mode” on the cameras, it adds, is permissible if the equipment’s blinking lights or sounds could contribute to an escalation in violence, reduce the effectiveness of a police tactic, or put someone’s safety at risk by disclosing a location.

Using BWCs is not a replacement for note-taking, the guidelines state, and footage recorded on the cameras should only be viewed for investigative and training purposes, or any purpose that is in compliance with existing applicable laws.

Prohibited behaviours include using the cameras for anything but law enforcement activities, deleting or altering their recordings, covering the lens on purpose in a police interaction, and sharing the images unless required by law.

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Multiple coroner’s inquest juries in B.C. have recommended quicker implementation of body-worn cameras — both for the Mounties and VPD — following fatal interactions between police and civilians.

The chief civilian director of the province’s police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office, supports the widespread deployment of BWCs in B.C. and beyond, believing them to be essential to improving public trust in police.

“People all carry cameras with them and I think the public expects it, and the failure of police to have those body cameras can actually lead to a distrust of police, saying, ‘Why don’t you have those cameras? What are you hiding?'” Ron MacDonald said.

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The footage the cameras produce can quicken an investigation, he added, including investigations into whether police actions contributed to serious harm or death.

“I can think of one where the the family of the individual who died from a gunshot wound — with the video evidence, we were able to demonstrate the self-inflicted nature of that incident and then show it to the family,” MacDonald said.

“They were able to see and be satisfied themselves about that matter, so video evidence can help us greatly in a file, can really help with the timeliness and sometimes, be exactly what is needed to help the affected person and their families understand actually what happened.”

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There are many critics of police BWC programs as well.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, for example, has expressed concern about the lack of “pressing objective” associated with BWCs in Vancouver and evidence that a pilot would meet that policy objective.

“There is high potential for people’s personal information to become known to the state and then shared within agencies,” the association’s policy director, Meghan McDermott, told Global News last December.

“If the purpose is to improve or increase accountability measures for police, we think that there are a lot of better ways to do this just using democratic regulation of police.”

As it stands, McDermott said Vancouverites can go about their business anonymously on the streets, with an officer’s ability to record information — at protests or gatherings, for example –restricted to what they observe firsthand. Body cameras would “exponentially increase” their ability to record the public and enter that information into a state database, where tools such as facial recognition software can be applied, she explained.

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When Vancouver council approved the BWC plan last December, an expert on the impacts and outcomes of BWCs warned that if Vancouver officers started wearing cameras, “iron-clad” regulation must accompany the program.

Christopher Schneider, a sociology professor at Manitoba’s Brandon University, has written multiple peer-reviewed papers on the topic. At the time,  he cautioned that body-worn cameras — which primarily capture the public rather than the officer — do not present the full context of an interaction with police.

“With body-worn cameras, largely, transparency and accountability are buzzwords that have been used by politicians and police because there’s not a lot of agreement right now on what that means,” Schneider explained. “Visibility is a key characteristic of transparency.”

The devices are far from a “perfect” tool for improving transparency and accountability, he added, noting that they can fall off in a pursuit, be turned off by officers, and do not have the battery or storage capacity to operate for the full length of an officer’s shift.

— with files from Kristen Robinson

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