Bodycam could help tell full story of fatal shooting: police board chair

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This article was published 25/11/2024 (319 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sunday’s fatal officer-involved shooting in Winnipeg has renewed the discussion around the possibility of body-worn cameras for city police, less than a week after Manitoba RCMP announced a rollout.

Video from body cameras could be helpful to investigators after an incident such as the shooting, said Coun. Markus Chambers, chair of the Winnipeg Police Board.

“It may have provided a fuller context of what had happened,” he told the Free Press Monday.

Chambers said bodycams likely wouldn’t have prevented the shooting.

The councillor said he saw video of the shooting on social media before the Winnipeg Police Service’s executive briefed him Sunday evening.

Footage recorded by at least one witness was widely shared and viewed on social media, and it showed only part of the incident, he added.

Compared with the U.S., it is rare for a Canadian police service to release bodycam video to the public, Chambers noted.

Police shot and killed a male outside a bus shelter at the Unicity shopping centre after the WPS said he stabbed an officer in the throat. Officers were carrying out shoplifting enforcement at the time.

Bodycams have been discussed in Winnipeg for years. High costs related to equipment and data storage have been cited as a hurdle.

Another matter is financial priorities that have moved body cams lower on the priority scale, Chambers said.

He said the city will monitor and learn from the RCMP’s rollout of bodycams.

Premier Wab Kinew said the province has increased funding for municipal police services in Manitoba, and decisions about bodycams are up to municipalities.

“I think we’ll leave it to the local elected officials and police services to decide how they’re going to implement the resources that we’re investing,” he told reporters at an unrelated event.

The bodycam discussion in Winnipeg also resurfaced last winter, following an inquest into the individual deaths of five men who were in city police custody, and three officer-involved shootings.

City council rejected a funding proposal in 2021. At the time, the cost of more than 1,300 cameras for Winnipeg officers was estimated at $7 million, while the annual operating cost, including digital video storage and staff, was pegged at about $4 million.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba is investigating Sunday’s incident and the fatal officer-involved shooting of Elgyn Muskego, 17, in Norway House Cree Nation last Friday.

In that incident, the IIU said RCMP officers were called to a home where a youth was allegedly high and armed with a weapon.

The boy was shot after he allegedly refused commands to drop the weapon and moved toward officers, the IIU said.

Muskego’s family questioned why police couldn’t find another way to de-escalate the situation.

On Nov. 20, Manitoba RCMP said all of its front-line officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras within 18 months.

The rollout began with officers in Steinbach.

Manitoba RCMP assistant commissioner Scott McMurchy said last week the launch is part of a commitment to build trust between the police service and Manitobans.

Officers will be required to turn the devices on when they respond to a call, interact with the public or record a statement.

The RCMP said the technology will help resolve public complaints faster and improve evidence gathering.

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Footage will be stored on the camera until an officer returns to their detachment and uploads it to a browser-based server only accessible by RCMP, the service said.

The federal government pledged $238.5 million over six years and $50 million in ongoing funding for bodycams for RCMP officers across Canada in a bid to boost transparency and accountability.

Skeptics have pointed to examples in the U.S. where officers failed to turn on cameras or turned them off during incidents, and to the fact that police bodycam video is rarely made public in Canada due, in part, to privacy laws.

— with files from Malak Abas and Tyler Searle

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.