Councillor calls for police body cameras
St. Catharines politician says recent world events show they are warranted
A St. Catharines councillor wants Niagara Regional Police to be outfitted with body cameras to eliminate subjectivity in civilian and police interactions.
Mat Siscoe, a councillor for St. Patrick’s Ward, said there have been instances for which police body cameras would have been useful in determining what exactly had taken place during confrontations.
He said it’s an issue he’s been thinking about for a while, but recent events have brought it to forefront.
“What’s been happening in the U.S, what happened in Toronto this past week, it keeps happening. And there’s also situations where police misconduct is alleged and the officers are saying that’s not what happened,” Siscoe said. “Because we have no video evidence, because it’s really just one per- son’s word against another, it’s creating this really combative system and I think body cameras are a way forward.”
Siscoe is asking St. Catharines city council to call on Niagara Region, through the police services board, to immediately begin the process of procuring and outfitting officers with body cameras.
The NRP’s board debated the issue in 2015 and ultimately put a pilot project on the back burner as Toronto police were studying the issue.
Last week, Toronto police Chief Mark Sanders told reporters he’s fast-tracking body cameras for all front-line officers in his service. The move came as questions were raised about the death of a 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell 24 storeys to her death from a highrise while police were present.
“If TPS’s chief is saying ‘the time has come, we need to expedite this,’ then I think we in Niagara have to be doing the same thing,” Siscoe said.
“I think it’s going to become standard practice and good practice. It’s a benefit on both sides. It removes subjectivity
and it really just lays down exactly what has occurred in these situations.”
NRP Deputy Chief Brett Flynn said Tuesday the issue of body cameras hasn’t been a priority for the service, but the chief is willing to have conversations with the board about it.
Flynn said there have been a lot of good arguments about what could happen as a result of deployment of cameras, including being able to resolve issues faster and having an unbiased perspective of what happened during a situation. But he said there continues to be very little empirical data and studies that show the benefit of them.
“In Canada, we’re still to a great degree lacking definitive information that says this is a good thing and something that the majority of police services, or police services depending on their locations and circumstances, should be investing in right now,” he said.
Flynn said if Toronto does outfit its front-line officers it will be something other services will be taking note of, not just from the perspective of how it effects community confidence and police relationships but also the logistics of putting it in place.
There are major data storage issues such as handling disclosure for court processes and responding to freedom of information requests that would have to be sorted out. While cameras are relatively inexpensive, he said it’s the storage and employing people to handle the system that is more costly.
Flynn said one of the reasons body cameras may not have been a priority in the service’s 2019-21 strategic plan is because, to a great degree, police in Niagara enjoy a pretty high level of trust with their community.
“One of the questions you have to ask yourself is, what is the reason? Why do we need to deploy it? Is it about public trust? Is it about the fact that by in large or to a great degree we’re not capturing incidents appropriately and there is that feeling in the public that that’s what’s happening?” he asked.
“I don’t know that that exists in Niagara.”
“I think it’s going to become standard practice and good practice.”
MAT SISCOE ST. CATHARINES CITY COUNCILLOR