User:Dulasikka/sandbox

Toronto

The Toronto Police suited 100 of its officers with body cameras to gain an “unbiased, accurate account” of interaction with the public. The body worn video, part of a pilot project launched in the wake of several incidents, especially the 2013 shooting death of Sammy Yatim,who was 18-year-old on a TTC streetcar. Cameras are worn by trained officers, who have been trained for three months of scenario-based testing at the Police College prior to going live in the communities. They are attached to four different units which includes; Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) rapid response team, traffic services motor squad, primary response unit at 55 division and the community response unit located at 43 division. The pilot project had a budget of $500,000 including cameras, software video storage, and any other equipment. Each cameras costed approximately $600 to $1,000. The project started in May 2015 and would continue for a year, till April 2016. Body-worn cameras in Toronto policing are still relatively new technology with little academic research on the topic. All forms of cameras are thought to be valuable for producing documentary evidence, but the in-car cameras and body-worn cameras are purported to have another key advantage: to improve the behavior of both, police officer and community member in an encounter. Video cameras in general, however, are not new to Toronto policing. Police have been using in-car video cameras to record interactions since the 1980.

Staff supt. Tom Russell said the cameras are an exciting project for the force that has the “potential to strengthen the policing profession.” Russell acknowledged body worn cameras are a complex matter, but stressed that the use of the cameras will be “overt”. Officers are responsible to notify people that they’re filming and can only turn off the cameras when the interaction is completed. According to Russell, this project is not to conduct surveillance on people or community, it’s simply a direct interaction with someone. Critics of the pilot project questioned the concerns of people’s privacy and how much footage will ever be shared with the public. Tom concluded by saying, “we’re looking to enhance public trust, to increase officer safety and public safety”. The main objectives are to identify the challenges to implementing a trial and identify how they overcome. The solutions to these challenges may provide key lessons for police leaders, not only as they undertake evidence-based testing, but also as they manage police operations and implement change.

How it Works

The body cameras are always on, but it doesn’t save anything until the officers pushes the start button. The cameras are recorded from then, plus 30 seconds before that. Once the officer’s returns back to the station, he or she connects the camera into a dock where the information is downloaded to an encrypted secure server at police headquarters. The virtual files are stored there for a year for security reasons. Officers does not have the capability to delete, alter, or edit anything on the camera itself. The cameras are secured, the videos and encrypted.