LPS Acting Chief Scott Woods. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge Police hope to start body cam pilot project in 2020

Jun 8, 2020 | 2:49 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Members of Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) could soon be equipped with body cameras.

Acting Chief Scott Woods says they started looking into using body cams in 2018 and officially made it part of their business plan for 2019-2022.

LPS is currently in the final stages of formulating a plan before potentially launching a pilot project.

“We’re down to a couple different vendors. We may actually look at choosing two different vendors for comparison purposes, so our goal is the end of fall by this year or winter of 2020 if not starting in January is where we want to go.”

While recent incidents like the death of George Floyd in the U.S. has intensified calls for better police accountability and for technology like this to be implemented, Woods told LNN that they have long believed in it being an important part of law enforcement.

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“It’s transparency for police, right? Again, I think it comes down to what we’ve talked about here a couple of times recently is trust, right? Trust for the public, trust for anybody that we’re interacting with, trust with the media, right? That’s, I would suggest, in the front view of a lot of people these days, and it’s one step towards building that trust again back with policing.”

In other jurisdictions, Woods claims body cameras have also helped in securing a number of guilty convictions.

For instances where a body camera might be turned off, the Acting Chief did not want to delve too deeply into hypotheticals, but they would have to investigate why the recording stopped. For example, the technology might have malfunctioned, a physical altercation could have lead to the camera being damaged, or the officer in question could have shut it off intentionally.

If it were intentional, he told media that there would be consequences.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that he would be putting pressure on provincial premiers, police forces, and the RCMP to equip officers with body cameras.

Woods says he is certainly in favour of this, especially if the various levels of government support it as well.

The main unknown at this point is what it will cost for this technology to be implemented across LPS.

“The actual costs for hardware, etc., aren’t too bad. Where your big costs come in for policing is data storage, data management, and maintenance.”

If there are anywhere from 25-40 officers with body cams on the street at any given time, that would be a lot of data to manage, especially since Scott thinks they might have to keep videos on file for up to 25 years after it was taken.

The pilot project would likely see a small number of officers test out the equipment.

The full interview with LPS Acting Chief Scott Woods can be viewed below: