Body-worn camera rollout going well for police, says top officer
The rollout of the Calgary police’s body-worn cameras has been going as well as the service expected, Calgary’s top officer said.
Interim Chief Steve Barlow, who took over the role Oct. 19, spearheaded the project to initiate the rollout of the cameras, which the service hopes will be finished in 2019.
“We’re getting very good feedback from the membership,” Barlow said.
“As they rolled out, and in talking with some of the members out there, they’re finding it’s good to have. It’s supporting what they do every day and it’s, at times, a calming measure. It’s doing everything we wanted it to.”
Police currently have 250 cameras available for use, all of which have been issued to officers in District 1 — an area bounded by Memorial Drive, Glenmore Trail, 14th Street S.W. and Deerfoot Trail.
By the second quarter of 2019, the service hopes to have a complete rollout for all of the roughly 1,100 front-line officers in the city.
Barlow couldn’t speak to any investigations involving body cameras, which were launched in July, as of yet.
“I don’t think we’ve had any cases actually go to court with this rollout of cameras,” he said.
Barlow said the service will reevaluate the body cameras and their usage in February.
“We will go into the new year, we will continue to look at them and make sure they’re providing us with the information required, and also look at the role it’s going to take on the back end of our systems when it comes to having this much video,” Barlow said.
Staff Sgt. Travis Baker said the body cameras are not monitored in real time, but officers are able to view a live feed from their smartphones or computers.
“Once the video is recorded, we can watch it directly off of the camera,” Baker said. “Because it’s a Cloud-based solution, once the camera is docked with the docking station it’ll be uploaded to the Cloud.”
Officers will be able to review footage and add notes and comments, but Baker said “there’s no way that an officer can delete the video or change the video” before being uploaded to the service’s body-worn camera unit.
Police policy requires officers to have the cameras powered while on duty and members will face stiff penalties if cameras are turned off.
Baker said the cameras have more than enough data storage and battery life to last a 12-hour shift.