No immediate plans for police body cams in Waterloo, Guelph

Waterloo Regional police and Guelph police say they have no immediate plans to bring in body cameras, despite the kickoff of a pilot project in Toronto that would have 100 officers wearing the devices.

The Toronto initiative, which got underway last week, is a pilot project that is mostly focused in Scarborough, and comes in response to several use of force incidents, most notably the 2013 shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim on a TTC streetcar. 

• Toronto police get body-worn cameras

"There's interest in it, but there's no immediate plan to do anything," said Waterloo Regional police spokesperson Olaf Heinzel. "It's something that's being looked at and from a general interest perspective, but I don't believe there's any immediate plans to do anything here."

A Guelph police spokesman also said the force has no immediate plans to implement body cameras.

Wilfrid Laurier University associate professor of law and society Christopher Schneider studies police and technology. He told The Morning Edition host Craig Norris in a Tuesday interview that local police forces should be waiting and watching how the pilot program plays out in Toronto.

"Some of the smaller services across Canada can really learn from that and maybe, one: not spend unnecessary money trying to figure it out and two: more importantly I think, maybe learn from some of the mistakes that are going to happen along the way," said Schneider. 

"I think then they can roll these cameras out in a way that we can take into consideration some data, some evidence to help direct how these cameras are being used because one of the basic issues now is of course, we don't have a lot of information." 

In the past two months, there have been two fatal shootings involving police in Kitchener and Guelph. Another police shooting of a man in Cambridge resulted in serious injuries.  

• Guelph hospital police shooting details begin to emerge from witnesses 

• Beau Baker death: Police training needs overhaul, says rights advocate

• Man shot by police in Cambridge after domestic violence call

Beau Baker, 20, was killed at the beginning of April outside his Kitchener apartment. Last week, 36-year-old Brandon Duncan was fatally shot in the Guelph General Hospital emergency department.

And a police officer shot and seriously injured a man who stabbed a woman he used to be in a relationship with, and then assaulted a police officer who arrived on the scene. 

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit is currently investigating all three cases.