Vancouver city council to discuss body cams for VPD officers

The City of Vancouver is looking to put a body-worn camera on every Vancouver police officer when they’re out on patrol.

A motion that city council will discuss Wednesday if approved, would start the process of finding out how much it could cost to implement body cameras for all VPD officers by 2025.

Coun. Lenny Zhou is behind the motion and says it is evidence-based, pointing at studies from other cities in several jurisdictions.

“We heard people want public safety. And this motion is about public safety,” he told CityNews, adding the cameras would also improve transparency and accountability.

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In Toronto, a review of the police service’s body cam pilot project in 2016 suggests most people didn’t change their behaviour when interacting with cops in an enforcement situation while body cams were worn.

Also in support of body cameras is the province’s police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office. Chief Civilian Director Ron MacDonald says they could lead faster conclusions to investigations.

“Recently this year, we had a case involving a Vancouver police officer involved in a shooting. There was really good video from a citizen cell phone that helped us conclude that quite quickly. And that’s the type of thing that body camera evidence can really help with,” he explained.

While the councillors in favour of the motion are looking into the cost of a whole body cam program, the VPD has a different plan. The department is asking for $200,000 in next year’s budget for a pilot project.

In a statement to CityNews, VPD Sergeant Steve Addison says in part: “There’s a lot of value to body-worn cameras, but also a lot of details that need to be worked out before we can move forward … including privacy concerns for people who are recorded but have not committed a crime, and the ability of Crown counsel to process and disclose evidence gathered during criminal investigations.”

Coun. Christine Boyle is also apprehensive about investing in a body camera program, wanting to ensure that they are effective.

“I’d rather see us invest that money in other ways. But if we’re going forward, I think a pilot project is the right place to start,” she said.

The motion will be discussed at Tuesday’s city council meeting, which begins at 9:30 a.m.

Police body camera privacy concerns

Echoing concerns about how body cameras could violate a person’s privacy, some organizations are wary about how much good the technology could do.

“We definitely want more oversight and to enhance accountability if something goes bad between the public and police, we are just skeptical this is the right tool to deploy right now given the cost,” said Meghan McDermott, policy director with the BC Civil Liberties Association.

“Not just the literal cost but the figurative cost in terms of privacy and public expression, and just the potential chilling effects it could have on people in our city.”

McDermott suggests the motion going before council Tuesday plays upon public fears but not enough is being said about possible privacy violations.

“They are really ignoring a lot of the advice and concerns from our privacy commissioners across the country who continue to put out statements cautioning any level of government looking to deploy this kind of technology,” she told CityNews.

“When we think about it, they have the ability to record really clear conversations, to record our faces, and the footage can be uploaded into databases that you can apply other software to — for instance, facial recognition technology.”

McDermott is wary of the capacity for the state to surveil what we are doing, who we associate with, whether or not we go to protests, and just how we go about our day-to-day life.

“I don’t think the public and the people who are driving these acquisitions of technology have really thought out all the nuances and details about how this could work in a way that would make sure that we would preserve our anonymity in the world,” she said.

“Even just the capacity for private conversations to be picked up on the street, if the people can be identified, in theory this breaks a whole lot of privacy laws. Somebody could go to the BC Privacy Commissioner and say their conversation was picked up on the street today and there was absolutely no reason for that to happen. [The cameras] suck up all this information with the idea that there might be something in there that’s interesting. That then sits in a server somewhere and you can apply third party software — for instance, facial recognition technology — and maybe see if a person’s face was picked up in more than one instance. You could start to map out who they associate with and what their patterns are.”

She also points to the ability for law enforcement to share such information with other agencies in Canada and abroad.

“There is a lot of information exchanged with our partners in the name of national security. We still don’t have good sense of what is in these agreements with other states, but we know this comes up and can haunt people trying to cross borders. From one little camera on a VPD officer’s body walking down the street, as we see it, that means the information collected could end up very far away.”