Preparing RCMP body-cam evidence for court will be monumental task, prosecutor says
About 1,000 frontline RCMP officers, per month, will begin using body-worn cameras over the next 8 months
The RCMP is phasing-in the use of body-worn cameras across the country and expects 90 per cent of frontline members to be wearing them within a year.
While the cameras could provide useful evidence for criminal cases, they will also mean "a massive undertaking," according to Shara Munn, president of the New Brunswick Crown Prosecutors Association.
She said prosecutors are unable to keep up with current cases as it is, and this will mean a "huge influx of work."
"It's something that we're certainly thinking about, worried about, trying to talk to government about, and get the ear of someone so that we can hopefully get ahead of this," Munn said.
"Oftentimes it takes government a long time to get those wheels rolling to address things, and then we end up being very reactive, and that's just not a good way to run a justice system.
The cameras will be worn on officers' chests, and the audio and video will be uploaded at the end of their shifts and maintained on a digital evidence management system.
In November, frontline RCMP in Elsipogtog First Nation, Richibucto, Saint-Quentin and Tobique First Nation began wearing body cameras. Other New Brunswick detachments are to follow suit over the next 12 to 18 months.
The RCMP said the cameras will help increase trust between police and communities, help resolve public complaints and improve evidence-gathering.
Munn said her concerns are not about this being new technology or unfamiliar territory. Dash-camera evidence and video from municipal police, and justice and public safety officers, have been in use for some time, she said.
With body-cam evidence, the worry is the "sheer volume of it that's going to be arriving."
"Once the RCMP completely adopt that, since they are the major policing force in the province, that's going to be just a monumental task to deal with," Munn said.
CBC News asked the Department of Justice and Public Safety for an interview, but received only a statement.
"The department recognizes the value of body camera evidence and is aware of the extra work that it might entail," Geoffrey Downey, spokesperson for the department, said.
"Police agencies and the Crown Prosecution Services have to review all relevant evidence and then disclose it to the defence. The department is working on how it will be done."
Administrative burden for police
Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation, said that overall, there's excitement and satisfaction about the move to body cams but it will be an administrative burden.
He said it'll be a challenge going through all of that footage — redacting parts of it and blurring the faces of those who are not involved — so that Crown prosecutors get a "court-ready package."
As an example, it would typically take four hours to prepare an impaired-driving package for court, with notes and transcribed statements, Sauvé said. With the addition of the body-worn camera evidence, that process now takes about a day or an entire shift, he said.
He warns that new technology shouldn't take police away from their core duties, out on patrol in the community.
Sauvé would like to see "additional bodies — whether they be evidence custodians or special constables or something to deal with that new burden."
"What we've seen thus far, it's a reliance on the actual police officer to do a lot of the administrative work. So that'll be something that we'll watch it very closely into 2025 [to see] where it goes."
Body cameras won't 'fix policing overnight'
Christopher Schneider, a professor of sociology at Brandon University, who has studied body-worn cameras in policing, said they have been "a Pandora's box for many years."
"They are a great idea on the surface. And I think that's why people, all people, from police administrators to politicians to victims of police violence, are all on board with the idea of body-worn cameras.
"But it's not going to fix policing overnight. Indeed, there are some criticisms that it's not going to fix policing at all."
He said while cameras do provide evidentiary value, they will never show the complete depiction of any event.
"The question becomes, is it worth it in terms of what the public are spending on it?"
In 2020, the federal government said that it would spend $238.5 million over six years, and $50 million in annual funding, to implement body-worn cameras and a system to manage digital evidence.
Schneider said that when there is a critical incident, with officers creating large volumes of data, it's "going to require more money to fund more positions to bring in more people to go through this data." This could be a hard sell to the public, he said.
If the RCMP doesn't have "the personnel necessary to comb through this data, is that going to actually lead to charges of getting stayed or people getting cut loose? Maybe."
"I don't know if people were thinking that far ahead. It's going to take time to sort of work through some of these things. Unfortunately the learning curve is steep, I think," he said.
Ontario has experience with body-camera evidence
Donna Kellway, president of the Ontario Crown Attorneys Association, said cameras were embedded in all parts of frontline policing by the Toronto police in 2020, with pilot projects started in 2014.
"It's the best evidence that you can give," she said. "But you have a lot of it."
She said cases today are much more complex than they used to be, not just with police-worn cameras, but also security cameras, in-car cameras and cellphone video.
"If a phone is seized, that's increasing the amount of data exponentially," Kellway said. "We all need to have more resources in order to make sure that we are properly able to utilize it, to properly review it, to vet it, to disclose it.
"You also have this ability to increase transparency, to increase accountability, but all of those things, because they involve so much digital space, they're going to take a lot more time and effort to be able to review."
Kellway said she wants to make sure all cases are properly investigated and prosecuted. But without added resources on the police and prosecution side, cases are put at risk, "then obviously public safety is put at risk."
"We don't want to see any cases getting stayed," she said.
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