The New Westminster Police Department is no longer actively considering using body-worn cameras on its officers, despite five-year-old comments from a former chief that the technology was “inevitable.”
The police force isn’t ruling out the use of body cams entirely, a spokesperson said in a statement, but emails obtained by the Record appear to indicate the issue lost momentum years ago.
In September 2014, former chief const. Dave Jones told the Record the use of body cams was more than likely in New West.
“It is going to come to issues of privacy, retention, storage, disclosure of these items,” Jones said at the time. “I think it’s an inevitable reality and those are the questions and issues that are being fleshed out at this point in time.”
At the time, U.S. and Canadian police forces were eyeing the technology following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in August 2014.
The Record made repeated interview requests with the NWPD on the topic starting in August, but instead received a statement in November saying the force has put the issue on the backburner.
“The New Westminster Police Department is always looking at ways to leverage technology to improve its service delivery. Video technology, including the use of body worn and in-vehicle camera systems can certainly be an enhancement to current evidence-gathering techniques,” said spokesperson Sgt. Jeff Scott in an email.
“At this time, the New Westminster Police Department is not actively considering the deployment of body worn cameras, however it is certainly a technology that we would consider in the future should a need be identified.”
Scott cited concerns around privacy, resourcing and budgeting that “factor into the decision to deploy them.”
Emails obtained through a freedom-of-information request appear to indicate the interest in body cams was short lived in New West.
The Record’s FOI request sought documents as far back as September 2014 and returned 29 pages of records. Of those 29 pages, 21 were dated between October 2014 and March 2015.
In those six months, the emails include information about body cameras, including articles on the limitations of the technology and others on provincial initiatives. One set of emails also references a study the NWPD took part in that, among other things, considered officers’ apprehensions about body cameras.
It also includes emails about events, like union meetings, that included discussions on body cams.
But from there, the records drop off for more than three years, until the RCMP surveyed municipal police forces on body cameras in June 2018.
Little internal discussion on the use of body cameras follows, however, and the matter appears to have lost any momentum it gained in 2014 and into 2015. More recent emails reference provincial committees and a letter from the province.
Just one email offers any current commentary on the matter. An honours student seeking to do a study involving the NWPD mentions body cameras to Insp. Todd Matsumoto, in reference to a trip the student took to Singapore.
Just a handful of Canadian police forces, including the Calgary Police Service, use body cams. That’s despite studies conducted by the RCMP and Toronto Police Service that recommended the use of body cams in their jurisdictions.
The technology is touted by proponents not only as a way to increase police accountability, but also as a way to improve evidence-gathering for police. Civil liberties groups, however, also caution that the matter needs to be handled carefully to not infringe on privacy rights.
Body cameras in the NWPD - New West Record FOI request by Dustin Godfrey on Scribd
