All front-line Barrie police officers are preparing to add a camera to their vests this summer.
By September, 150 Barrie officers should be able to record their interactions with the public as early adopters in Canada of body-worn cameras.
“The goal will be to train officers in a staged process,” said Staff Sgt. Dave Goodbrand, who is heading up the project for the local police service.
Front-line officers in uniform from all four platoons, the downtown response unit, the schools’ officers and tactical unit officers will be equipped with cameras.
The cameras and the related technology, which are specifically designed for police use, are expected in coming weeks. As soon as they arrive, officers will each undergo three hours of training and immediately include them as part of their regular gear, which could begin before the end of the month.
Their implementation follows a pilot program from October 2020 to February 2021 with 25 officers, during which time it was determined that the cameras are beneficial to capturing evidence that can be used in court. An extra benefit was that officers’ experience indicated people tend to be better behaved when they’re on camera.
The cameras are only turned on in certain situations when police are interacting with the public. They are also equipped to turn on automatically if the officer pulls out their sidearm, Taser or activates the cruiser’s emergency lights.
“If I’m going to stop to talk to somebody or investigate a situation, stop a vehicle, go to a radio call or I’m going to question somebody… then it’s going to be recorded,” Goodbrand told BarrieToday. “We want our officers to have a true account of what occurred from their perspective and also prevent them from false allegations, etc.”
The resulting video evidence offers a true account of what happened, leaving no room for speculation, he added.
The cameras and the platform that helps manage the captured video fit seamlessly into the infrastructure developed by the police department in recent years. Earlier, the force developed its digital evidence management system for managing and sharing digital media with courts and prosecutors, which will now manage the video captured by the body-worn cameras.
A case management unit was then established as a pilot to review, process, approve and transfer digital brief submissions to the Crown and manage the digital media.
The implementation price tag to outfit 150 officers for 2021 is $140,499. Starting 2022 the average annual cost for the remaining eight years of the contract is $171,941. The total for the entire contract is $1,516,031.
