RCMP Staff Sgt. Jerry Nutbrown brings you behind the scenes with a serious of columns taking you behind police work and how it’s done in our community. If you have a question you think needs to be answered in Behind the Bison, send it to admin@borderpulse.ca and we will be sure to share it with him.
It has now been about a year since the Lloydminster RCMP started utilizing body worn cameras (BWC)
and after thousands of recordings, there are very few negatives.
When officers became equipped and trained on the BWCs, the cameras were put into use immediately.
While there was a learning curve with operating them effectively, the benefits became immediately
apparent. The reasons for implementing them were for better documentation of police interactions and
along with this came many benefits.
The main benefit is for disclosure to the courts. Before, the courts relied upon verbal explanations after
the fact or maybe some photos. We did have some video recordings, but these were limited to anything
our in-vehicle cameras/microphones could record or if there were any civilian recordings available. This
left out much of the interactions subtleties and things the officers didn’t hear or observe.
In critical incidents and stressful situations tunnel vision can occur as a physiological response on a
person’s body. Without intent, people’s memories can be limited, and this includes law enforcement
personnel and civilians alike, it’s a human thing. As its not unusual for someone’s memory recall to be
less than fulsome, now with BWC recordings, the incidents from the BWC views are preserved for
unlimited reviews.
The BWCs capture so much more of incidents including a firsthand viewing of offender and officer
behaviour. As someone who oversaw public complaints for the entire Eastern Alberta District for three
years, I very much welcomed the use of them. Besides accountability of officers that don’t hold the line
on the expectations of the RCMP, it also vindicates those who are wrongly accused of acting improperly.
As noted above, court is where the benefit of them really comes to light. Judges often heard a
downplayed rendition of offender behaviour but now, offender’s raw actions and words are brought to
life in a court’s sterile environment. They allow the officer to monologue their actions and thoughts as
they formulate plans and it records the reasoning for their decisions. For the most part as well, emotions
are captured which add further context to the situations.
One downside is when the recordings have to be redacted to blur faces of people uninvolved or other
things caught on camera that aren’t part of the incident and this takes time. Managing and storing the
huge volume of video also came with additional infrastructure costs to download and move the
recordings to where they need to be for easy access.
Officers have gotten used to BWCs and the benefit of them has been excellent. The courts now expect
and rely on the firsthand view of incidents that generate charges as this gives them so much more
information including the multiple video viewpoints of all officers involved. As trials are often years after
an incident had occurred, the BWC recordings will bring everyone involved back to the day.
BWCs did not replace officers taking notes or writing reports but rather is used as an additional tool
which has been very welcomed.
Read more: Behind the Bison – Consequences
