A day after Alberta announced plans to roll out police body-worn cameras province-wide, B.C.’s Minister of Public Safety his west coast province has no current plans to follow suit.
B.C. rolled out province-wide protocols and standards for the police use of body-worn cameras (BWC) in 2019, but Minister Mike Farnworth said for the time being the decision to use them is being left in local hands.
“It is up to each police agency at this particular point. We have been working with municipalities and chiefs of police on this issue, that’s why the standard operating procedures for body cameras were put in place,” Farnworth said.
“It is a tool. A lot depends on the issues around the data storage, privacy matters, how long data is stored for, when a camera is on, when a cameras is off. Yes, they are useful, but at this point in B.C. we have not made them mandatory.”
In announcing the new province-wide mandate, Alberta’s United Conservative Party government said the devices would protect officers and the public and help make police decisions more transparent.
The province is currently consulting with the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police on a rollout plan, including funding and logistics.
Body-worn cameras are already used by several Canadian police forces, including in Toronto and Calgary. The RCMP is also in the process of rolling out 12,500 of the devices to officers across the country.
In December, Vancouver city council voted to study the use of BWCs with a goal of implementing them for front-line officers by 2025.
The Vancouver Police Department has said it is open to talking about cameras, but that questions around privacy must first be addressed.
B.C.’s civilian police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office (IIO), has long supported the use of BWCs, saying they provide a powerful tool for police oversight.
“In any situation where police are interacting with a member of the public a that leads to serious harm or death, video is almost always a very useful piece of evidence,” IIO Chief Civilian Director Ron MacDonald said.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean it will be definitive, but it is a very useful piece of evidence because it captures video and it also capture sound which can sometimes be even more important. So in any situation with an interaction between the police and public video is important.”
MacDonald said the public is already accustomed to the proliferation of cameras, and has come to expect video to be used as evidence. While cameras may not always provide a complete picture of what happens in an incident, they are impartial recordings of what happened in a way eyewitnesses may not be, he added.
Video evidence can also speed up the pace of an investigation, whether it leads to an officer being cleared of allegations or to the recommendation for charges if an offence occurred.
The technology, however, comes with numerous concerns according to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA).
BCCLA policy director Meghan MacDermott said privacy is a major issue, particularly given that police could potentially be recording in private homes or public places.
Officers are also often dealing with vulnerable people and victims, she added, arguing any rollout must be accompanied by significant public consultation.
“It can in theory expose so many people, there can be so many privacy intrusions, especially with all the sensitive contexts police operate in,” she said.
MacDermott also flagged concerns about transparency and police accountability.
She said in places where BWCs are already in use, police forces have fought to prevent the release of body camera footage.
Rather than rely on “sexy” technology, she said, governments should be looking to strengthen laws and policies governing when and how police deploy force, “rather than wait until something goes sideways and then say, oh, lets look at the footage after the fact.”
There is also the issue of cost. Storing BWC footage, obtaining software and employing specialists are all expensive endeavours and raise the question of whether the money could be better spent elsewhere on community safety, MacDermott said.
Alberta has yet to release a cost estimate for its provincial mandate, while the RCMP has estimated its own program would cost between $2,000 and $3,000 per unit annually.
Farnworth said Wednesday that the B.C. government was not committing any provincial money to BWC initiatives at this time.
Ryan Hira, an associate lawyer at Vancouver-based Hira-Rowan LLP said body-worn cameras would be a welcome addition, but noted that courts have also identified several limitations to their use.
Cameras can only show the perspective from where they are placed on the body, and have a much narrower range than what the human eye can see, he said.
BWCs also often shoot at a lower frame rate than what is typically seen on television, recording at about 10-15 frames per second.
“Key actions may be lost by these lost frames,” he said.
Additionally, they often use fish-eye lenses, which courts have found can distort images and distances, and blur towards the edges of the frame.
“This makes it quite difficult to calculate force, speed and distance, which may be employed by police officers,” he said.
So far, just one municipal police department in British Columbia is using body-worn cameras.
The Delta Police Department began a pilot program with the devices in May 2021, and expanded it to add four more cameras for patrol officers in February.
According to B.C. provincial government standards, a privacy impact assessment must be completed and approved prior to the deployment of body-worn cameras. The precise circumstances under which they may be used and information on the policy, must also be made public.
Footage must be stored with restricted access and not altered at any time, and may only be retained for one year from the date it was recorded. It must then be deleted, the standards state.
— with files from Elizabeth McSheffrey