Police and body cameras: an imperfect solution

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/10/2024 (369 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another police shooting occurred this week in Winnipeg.

The Independent Investigations Unit (IIU) is investigating, making it the 10th active officer-involved shooting case. There is no body-worn camera (BWC) footage of any of these shootings because the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) do not wear body cameras.

Winnipeggers are surely left wondering: Why doesn’t the WPS have body cameras like police in Toronto or Calgary? And what can be expected if or when the devices eventually come to the city?

The major barrier to equipping WPS with body cameras is simply a matter of cost. Mayor Scott Gillingham has said as much, noting that “it’s about having the money to do it.”

The cost of Toronto’s body camera program for its front-line officers is nearly $7 million annually, whereas in Calgary it’s $5 million a year. Taxpayers fund BWC programs. Both cities have contracts with Axon Enterprise, a U.S.-based weapons and technology company.

Axon has near complete control over the global body camera market. Axon is a publicly traded company motivated by maximizing sales and contracts to generate profits for its shareholders. Axon sells cameras and data subscription plans, like cellphone providers, and like with mobile phones, with each contract renewal, there are subscription rate increases.

The cost of a BWC program is expensive, but also difficult to sustain indefinitely without raising taxes or diverting money away from social services like health care or education.

But cost is only part of the reason why Winnipeg does not have body cameras. There is also the matter of evidence.

Do body cameras work? It depends.

The scientific evidence concerning the efficacy of the devices is mixed. Police use of force and citizen complaints against the police are the two most frequently tested outcome measures of BWCs. Research has found that with the use of the cameras, police force can decrease, but also increase, but other times, the presence of BWCs makes no difference.

But what about all the talk about transparency and accountability?

Body cameras offer almost zero transparency in Canada, if transparency is understood as public visibility. Body camera footage from the U.S. is plentiful on sites like YouTube but rarely will one find Canadian footage online. This is because privacy restrictions are stricter in Canada, restrictions that generally do not allow the police to release footage to the public.

Which means if WPS get BWCs, Winnipeggers will almost certainly never see the footage. Instead, the public will have to continue to rely on police accounts about officer-related shootings with no corresponding body camera video evidence. Body cameras then will probably also do very little to increase community trust. Those who already trust the police will likely continue to do so and people who do not trust the police will probably remain distrustful.

What little we know about accountability is that even when officers are determined after an investigation to have engaged in misconduct documented on body camera, rarely are they fired and almost never go to jail.

In 2021, a Toronto officer who Tasered a Black man and then kneeled on his neck, in a case of mistaken identity, pleaded guilty to using unnecessary force. The interaction was captured on body camera, which the TPS has refused to release. The officer, who had a reported history of police misconduct, was demoted for one year.

The widespread prevailing belief about body cameras, is that they will somehow deter bad behaviour. But this belief is simply untrue. There are already surveillance cameras in banks and retail establishments.

In February, a man robbed a bank in Winnipeg and cameras didn’t stop him. Retail shoplifting is a $5-billion annual problem across the country, despite cameras in nearly every store.

Cameras don’t deter bad behaviour, rather they merely document it. BWC recordings will also almost always be incomplete documentation of a given incident. Body cameras may get switched on late or capture an event in progress when officers arrive on scene. So, while the devices have some evidentiary value, what they offer will mostly be incomplete.

The evidence in support of body cameras is mixed, and BWCs contribute rather minimally to transparency and accountability in Canada. Thus, Winnipeggers should not be asking when they get body cameras, but instead, be asking different questions.

Do Winnipeggers want BWCs to document crime, even partially, at a cost of millions of dollars a year? Or would that money be better spent on solutions proven to reduce crime?

There is an evidence-based remedy.

Research findings show that investments in public schools leads to reductions in adult crime, as does investments in affordable housing, among other social services.

Spending tens of millions of tax dollars indefinitely on police body camera programs won’t make Winnipeg any safer.

But investing in communities could. This would be a better use of resources to address the systemic causes of crime.

Christopher J. Schneider is professor of sociology at Brandon University. His most recent book is Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of Digital Media.