Vancouver mayor, councillors want body cameras for all VPD officers by 2025
Vancouver mayor, councillors want body cameras for all VPD officers by 2025
On Tuesday, Vancouver’s new mayor and council will vote on a motion that would see every front-line VPD officer outfitted with a body-worn camera by the year 2025.
Coun. Lenny Zhou, with ABC Vancouver, is bringing the motion which will direct staff to begin costing out the cameras and data storage, and to return with a budget for the project by early 2024.
Body-worn cameras for Vancouver Police was an election campaign promise by Mayor Ken Sim's party that Zhou says the public supports, and he believes front-line officers will too.
“Chief Adam Palmer has advocated many, many times regarding the benefit of using the body-worn cameras,” said Zhou, who is concerned the only video the public can currently see of police interacting with suspects comes from bystanders’ cell phones.
“That’s exactly what’s important, to have a complete picture by the body-worn camera, and not the picture captured by very short clips of the incident,” he added.
Former West Vancouver Police Department chief Kash Heed agrees.
“In the day and age we are in right now, with all the interactions police have, with all the negative publicity police are garnering over any use of force – how could they not embrace something like this? Other organizations are doing it, we need to do it here in Vancouver,” said Heed.
Vancouver Police Department spokesperson, Const. Tania Visintin, says it’s something the force has looked into before.
“It’s always been a cost-prohibitive issue due to technology, data storage and what not,” she said.
As part of its first budget, the new council is also expected to fund a $200,000 pilot project on body-worn cameras for VPD officers. Visintin says a working group has been formed to look at concerns around cost and privacy.
“We are going to work with the Crown on issues around the privacy concern, and having people that aren’t criminals be on film. So there are still some kinks that need to be worked out, and that’s something that this working group will do in the pilot project,” she said.
Zhou is confident those kinks can and will be worked out.
“So many other countries have implemented this already,” Zhou said.
And he claims it’s been a huge success, pointing to a study out of California that found body-worn cameras led to an 88 per cent decrease in complaints against police officers.
“At the same time, the incidents of use of force by police deceased by 59 per cent, so this is the evidence-based approach we have been advocating for,” Zhou said.
Assuming the ABC-majority council approves the motion and the pilot project, some officers may be outfitted with body cameras in 2023. But it will likely be several years before they are standard issue with every VPD uniform.
A senior government official says a Canadian military assessment team is on its way to Turkiye in the wake of a devastating earthquake that's killed thousands.
A man has been arrested and two children are dead after a driver crashed a city bus into a daycare in Laval, Que. Wednesday morning. The deadly crash sent multiple children to area hospitals and parents scrambling to find their kids shortly after they dropped them off for the day at the Garderie éducative Sainte-Rose, north of Montreal.
Condolences are pouring in on Parliament Hill after a Laval, Que., city bus crashed into a daycare on Wednesday morning, with federal politicians of all stripes expressing their sympathies with the families affected and gratitude to the first responders.
Many Canadians are experiencing strains caused by the increased cost of living and inflation. In his exclusive column for CTVNews.ca, contributor Christopher Liew shares some of the top credits and deductions that you may be able to claim on your income tax return to help you save money.
In a first for the Bank of Canada, it has released a summary of deliberations by its governing council regarding its policy decision to raise its key interest rate target by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 per cent in January. Here are five key takeaways from those discussions.
Netflix Canada is rolling out its long-anticipated plans to crack down on password sharing, saying it will begin notifying Canadian users today by email about limitations.
The way respiratory viruses have circulated this fall and winter, most Canadians could probably benefit from a hand-hygiene refresher. Here are the latest hand-washing best practices to apply in your daily life.
Protracted labour shortages in Canada could fuel more rapid wage growth and inflation over time, potentially prompting the need for higher interest rates long-term, a new RBC Economics report released Wednesday said.
The Bank of Canada released a summary of its Governing Council meetings on Wednesday, providing the public and financial institutions with more insight into the central bank’s decision to raise its key interest rate on Jan. 25.
Mounties on Vancouver Island say they were in "disbelief" when they saw a senior driving more than 100 km/h through a school zone in Qualicum Beach, B.C.
Charges have now been laid against a tug and barge company and one of its senior officials two years after a tug sank off British Columbia's coast south of Kitimat, killing the captain and one crew member.
The Calgary Police Service asked residents of a northwest neighbourhood to shelter in their homes as officers responded to a situation Wednesday morning involving a firearm.
Animal welfare advocates are urging pet owners to spay and neuter their pets after two kittens were found abandoned in a child's backpack in the St. Albert area last week.
An Ontario lawyer who filed a $229-million lawsuit against his former “sugar baby” for alleged fraud had his case dismissed after the court found he'd become "obsessed" with the young woman when she attempted to end their arrangement.
An Ontario grocery chain said they are seeing an “unprecedented” surge in customers after a recent TikTok revealing the company’s low food prices went viral.
A man has been arrested and two children are dead after a driver crashed a city bus into a daycare in Laval, Que. Wednesday morning. The deadly crash sent multiple children to area hospitals and parents scrambling to find their kids shortly after they dropped them off for the day at the Garderie éducative Sainte-Rose, north of Montreal.
Condolences are pouring in on Parliament Hill after a Laval, Que., city bus crashed into a daycare on Wednesday morning, with federal politicians of all stripes expressing their sympathies with the families affected and gratitude to the first responders.
Justin Trudeau has thrown in the towel in the fight to maintain the federal role as gatekeeper of a public, universal, accessible and fair health-care system in Canada, writes former NDP leader Tom Mulcair in an exclusive column for CTVNews.ca. 'That could have tragic consequences for folks on the lower rungs of the social and economic ladder.'
The federal government is putting up $500,000 for a feasibility study into a potential search for the remains of two Indigenous women at a Winnipeg-area landfill.
A Saskatoon couple is left feeling powerless to help their family and friends dig out of the rubble following the two major earthquakes in Turkiye on Monday.
Saskatoon's Ward 3 city councillor David Kirton decided to cancel his “Coffee with the Councillor” event scheduled for Saturday afternoon at Confederation Mall because of what he calls threatening phone calls and emails which became a “cause for concern”.
Nova Scotia Health is under the microscope after eight employees were found snooping into medical records. The privacy breaches involve the electronic health records of people associated with the April 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia, among others.
Former London, Ont. high school teacher Dustin Epp, 48, was supposed to appear for his sentencing hearing Wednesday afternoon, but the matter has been delayed until next week due to health-related concerns and to give Epp more time to prepare his legal defence.
A 20-year-old driver from London, Ont. is temporarily without a licence after OPP stopped them for allegedly driving 145 km/h in a 60 km/h zone on Tuesday night.
A thief was siphoning fuel from trucks on York Street in London before a massive fire broke out in a storage yard. U-Haul told CTV News London an explosion occurred at 745 York St. around 1 a.m. Hours later, a photographer from the London Police Service Forensics Division was on scene taking photos of charred vehicles.
The wait is over for ticketholders in the latest Canadian Hard of Hearing Association's Ultimate Dream Home Draw as Pure Country Sudbury morning show hosts pulled the names of the prize winners Wednesday afternoon.
Netflix Canada is rolling out its long-anticipated plans to crack down on password sharing, saying it will begin notifying Canadian users today by email about limitations.
A memorial has been set up in the area where 30-year-old Karen Cunningham’s body was found, as police in Woodstock continue to investigate her death as “suspicious” in nature.
