Case against body cameras for Toronto police officers
During separate incidents last year, Toronto Police Sgt. Christopher Heard allegedly sexually assaulted two women after offering to drive them home. Heard, a veteran officer, is facing two counts of sexual assault after the provincial Special Investigations Unit (SIU) looked into complaints against him — the allegations have not been proven in court and Heard was suspended with pay while his case is before the courts.
Public fear that police can abuse their power explains the emerging popularity of police cameras, especially body worn cameras, as a way of achieving greater police accountability.
Not so fast. Toronto police are also investigating Heard for misconduct: He is accused of not turning on the camera in his police cruiser when he picked up one of the women, who claims he assaulted her inside the car. This is the problem with police cameras — they seek an indirect solution to the problem of police brutality. Our police now want to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on cameras they alone will control — this is an insult to accountability.
The Police Services Act requires officers to turn on their in-car cameras in many situations, including whenever there is a public benefit in doing so, such as instances when a member of the public enters a police car.
Heard is accused by Toronto police of not only failing to turn the camera on, but of failing to notify his police operator of his whereabouts during the interaction, and for making notes about his Sept. 24, 2015 interaction with the 27year-old woman only after she formally complained. These allegations have not been proven at the ongoing police tribunal.
It’s obvious why police officers would be reluctant to document situations that could result in their own discipline or criminal prosecution. But, given our collective denial about the depth of police brutality, this means we are allowing the cops the choice to police themselves. We seem to believe police abuse their power through some accident, or in a few exceptional cases, and not because we give them the unchecked power to do so.
The police services board is currently considering a proposal to equip all of Toronto’s 3,200 front-line officers with body cameras. The cameras alone will cost $85 million, but we would pay much more for the significant police labour needed to manage all the video footage. A police report on the cameras says the cost is worth it, and promises cameras will ensure “the unbiased, independent account of police/community interactions.”
Perhaps they will, in some cases. In many other cases the video evidence, which is only one part of any investigative process, will prove inconclusive. More importantly, some police will simply decide not to turn on their cameras at all. By assuming this kind of discretion makes sense, the police are demonstrat- ing their tolerance for inevitable abuses, from unnecessary searches to sexual assault to homicide.
It would probably be too expensive to monitor all our police 24/7, but the fact such surveillance is necessary is the sad point. We can’t trust our police, and we shouldn’t spend a fortune monitoring them instead of acknowledging why they need to be watched in the first place.
Cameras can be part of the effort for police accountability, but the money and time needed to employ them would be far better spent in directly addressing the violence the Toronto police continue to perpetrate against the public. Body cameras are the new tasers, the new technological wonder that allows us to avoid calling out police brutality. We change the equipment, but the violent behaviour continues.
The most remarkable thing about Heard’s alleged sexual assault is that the SIU determined his behaviour to be worthy of charges. In about 97 per cent of SIU investigations across Ontario, no police officer is charged. The SIU itself is made up almost entirely of former police officers.
If Toronto’s police board wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the name of police accountability, body cameras are of low priority. The best bang for our accountability buck is to overhaul our failed oversight bodies, which are currently numb to the reality of systemic police brutality. Desmond Cole is a Toronto-based journalist. His column appears every second Thursday.