Officers with the police force in Cornwall, Ont., are now wearing body cameras while on duty, joining a growing number of police agencies in eastern Ontario — but not Ottawa.
The Cornwall Police Service (CPS) launched the first phase of the program Wednesday after its board voted to purchase the cameras in January.
While a select group of officers on each shift will be equipped with the devices to start, all 54 front-line patrol officers will eventually be outfitted, according to a CPS media release.
Like other cities across Ontario, Cornwall has seen an increase in violent crimes, thefts and calls for mental health crises, said Insp. Chad Maxwell.
With that, he added, comes more investigations, prosecutions and complaints.
Earlier this year, the city’s police service board heard there had been 86 public complaints since 2018. Twenty-three required an investigation by the board, with an average of 40 hours spent per investigation.
“This modernization no doubt improves our service delivery. I think it creates efficiencies both at the police department as well as the criminal judiciary system where we’re presenting evidence,” Maxwell told CBC.
“It really does provide a true, unaltered and unbiased version of events as they take place.”
CPS officers will be required to record all interactions with the public while they’re conducting investigations. The cameras will emit a sound every two minutes and will flash a red LED light so people know it’s recording.
Anyone charged with an offence will be entitled to the footage.
The CPS is one of a growing number of police forces across Ontario to start wearing cameras, including those in Brockville, Belleville, Akwesasne and Toronto.
The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is one of the only agencies in eastern Ontario that does not.
In a news release earlier this month, the force said it will eventually launch an in-car camera pilot project. Those cameras will be equipped with microphones to capture audio when an officer gets out of their vehicle.
OPS did not answer CBC’s questions about whether it ever intends to implement body cameras.
Body cameras inevitable, says expert
People have long debated whether police should wear cameras while on duty, with some arguing that there’s little evidence the technology influences how officers behave.
But one local expert believes every force in the country will eventually incorporate cameras into their operations.
“We won’t have this conversation in 10 years because everybody will have had them for years and years and it’ll just be a normal thing,” said Gregory Brown, a professor of legal studies at Carleton University.
Brown, who was also a former member of the OPS, has done extensive research into the use of body cameras by front-line officers.
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He said the benefits of using the technology outweigh any argument against them — with cost being the big one.
Body cameras aren’t cheap, he said, and neither is training officers to use them nor maintaining the storage needed to save footage.
The CPS spent at least $159,000 for cameras that will need to be replaced every three to five years.
Despite the financial outlay for the cameras, Brown said they not only do more to ensure officers perform their duty on their best behaviour, but also saves them from “false complaints,” said Brown.
Cell phone video filmed by bystanders often misses the entirety of an interaction between a person and a police officer, he said, while body cameras give police their own independent recording of what happened.