Victoria’s secrets

The way Frank Elsner sees it, the day when all cops wear small video cameras on their uniforms is unavoidable, whether the police want it or not.

“I really think it’s inevitable in policing,” said Elsner, chief of the Victoria Police Department.

“The world has changed. With the advent of things like the Internet, YouTube and Twitter, people are used to seeing things for themselves.”

That includes in a court of law, Elsner said, where today’s digital culture and popular entertainment mean jurors expect to see video evidence of a crime.

“It’s the CSI effect — juries want evidence that just wasn’t available or required in the past,” said Elsner, who thinks police departments and the B.C. government should get on board with body-worn cameras for cops.

“It really adds value to what we do,” he said. “We support it.”

So does an all-party committee of the B.C. legislature, which just issued a new report calling on the government to move urgently on the issue.

“Members concluded by strongly supporting the use of body-worn cameras in B.C. and calling on government, in consultation with police and non-police stakeholders, to aggressively pursue the steps necessary to implement the use of body-worn cameras by B.C. police members,” said the unanimous report.

But “aggressive” is not exactly the word anyone would use to describe the government’s approach to the idea of putting cameras on cops.

“We’re not there yet,” said Attorney General Suzanne Anton, stressing that it’s not up to the government to tell the police what to do.

“Police departments make their own decisions about what kind of investigation tools they use,” she said.

“We’re monitoring it.”