Vancouver council approves plan for all frontline police officers to wear body cameras by 2025

All frontline officers with the Vancouver Police Department will be fitted with body-worn cameras by 2025, city council voted Wednesday night.

The motion instructs staff to start costing out the cameras and data storage, and to return with a budget for the project by early 2024. The rollout of body cameras by 2025 was a key election promise of Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC Party.

”I do support body cameras in the sense that they do reduce investigation costs, they hold people accountable—police officers and the general public,” Sim said during the council debate.

The plan does not have the full support of city hall.

Non-ABC councillors raised questions about why the motion was being pushed forward, given the VPD already had plans for a body camera pilot program for next year. The department has requested $200,000 in funding for the program in next year’s budget.

“It’s like the pilot is useless if we’re already going ahead and saying we’re going to go ahead and implement it,” said Councillor Adrienne Carr during the debate.

Christine Boyle said the motion was not “good governance,” while Pete Fry said that it “ignores best practice.”

“The motion that was approved by ABC tonight leapfrogs (the pilot) altogether, it sort of ignores the request from the Vancouver Police Board and goes right to approving, in principle, body-worn cameras for all operating police officers,” Fry said after the council session.

Carr, Boyle and Fry all voted against the motion. They said there are concerns around privacy and cost that need to be addressed.

In response to the concerns, ABC councillors reiterated their election promise to address public safety and the desire to see it fulfilled by 2025. Peter Meiszner suggested that waiting until the end of the 2023 pilot program would delay full implementation.

“I don't want to see us dithering for another two or three years, trying to make a decision about a program that’s been in place for decades in other jurisdictions,” Meiszner said.

The VPD has looked into body cameras before.

“It’s always been a cost-prohibitive issue due to technology, data storage and what not,” Const. Tania Visintin said.

SUPPORT FROM POLICE WATCHDOG

The chief civilian director of the Independent Investigations Office said body-worn cameras will make it easier for investigators to spot misconduct by police.

“Every person has a camera (and) for police not to have the same equipment to capture their incidents with the public, it raises the idea that they’re not being transparent,” said Ron McDonald.

He added that since Apr. 1 of this year there have been 21 officer involved shootings in B.C., which is triple the annual average. McDonald also said the number of police interactions that are being investigated has doubled since 2017.

“We do have a lot more cases with respect to serious injury or harm or death being caused to people by police. So what the reason for that is, I can’t give a specific answer,” McDonald said. “The bottom line is, the things that can be captured on those cameras, in particular situations where force is used by police against a member of the public, are too important to not be using a tool that is now readily available.”