TORONTO – Knowing that police officers are wearing body cameras could go a long way to reducing unacceptable use-of-force as well as complaints, according to a study from the University of Cambridge.
The study’s results come just as the Toronto Police are about to launch a pilot project to equip officers with body-worn cameras.
University researchers found that use-of-force by police officers in Rialto, California dropped 59 per cent and complaints against officers fell 87 per cent compared to the previous year after the officers began wearing the cameras.
The researchers separated a year’s worth of police shifts in the California into an experimental and control group. The control group did not wear cameras while the experimental group did.
According to the study, which the university claimed it’s the first scientific report into the effectiveness of body-worn cameras, the knowledge that they are being filmed can itself stop the police or citizen from acting out.
“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.
The Toronto Police are in the initial stages of equipping 100 officers with body-worn cameras a part of pilot project approved in February.
Police have not said however where the cameras will be worn, when they will be turned on and what the cost will be.
And retired Justice Frank Iacobucci’s report on the use of force by Toronto Police, which was commissioned by Chief Bill Blair in the wake of the Sammy Yatim shooting, recommended among other things that all officers be equipped with body-worn cameras.
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