RCMP prepares to deploy body cameras to thousands of officers nationwide
Mounties at select detachments will start using cameras on Nov. 18
Thousands of RCMP officers will start wearing body cameras over the coming months, marking a pivotal shift in how Mounties and Canadians interact.
The long-anticipated national rollout of body cameras is happening in stages, the RCMP said Thursday. Starting next week, Mounties at select detachments will start carrying body-worn cameras on their chests. The audio and video will be uploaded and maintained on a digital evidence management system.
Over the next nine months, roughly 1,000 frontline RCMP officers per month will deploy with Axon Public Safety Canada Inc.'s cameras. The force estimates that 90 per cent of frontline members will be using body-worn cameras by this time next year.
Other police agencies in Canada already use the technology. But the size and unique mandate of the RCMP — which, alongside its federal policing responsibilities, delivers provincial, regional and local police services in many parts of the country — makes this the largest and most ambitious rollout.
The RCMP's national profile also likely means its program will attract added scrutiny over when the cameras are used and who gets access to the footage.
According to RCMP policy, the cameras have to be on and recording during service calls, including ongoing crimes and investigations, mental health calls and protest response.
The cameras won't be used during strip searches or body cavity searches, or in settings with "a high expectation of privacy," such as washrooms, hospitals and treatment centres, said the RCMP.
Canadians unlikely to see much footage
The RCMP has said it might proactively disclose footage from a body-worn camera "where it is in the public interest to do so."
Taunya Goguen, director general of the RCMP's body-worn camera program, said that the nature of Canada's privacy laws means footage will likely be released only "on an exceptional basis."
"And only when the public interest outweighs the invasion of privacy of an individual," she told reporters Thursday.
Members of the public can request footage taken of them through the Privacy Act.
Christopher Schneider — a professor of sociology at Brandon University who researches how technology affects police work — has concerns about who controls access to the footage and how it will be released.
"If an individual who is in a circumstance, an interaction with a police officer, and feels that they were the subject of police brutality and they have legal counsel, that footage, in my opinion, should be immediately released to the person in question," he said.
"To allow police officers, the RCMP in this circumstance, to review the footage while the person's waiting for it and the legal counsel are waiting for it provides an unfair advantage to police."
While body-worn camera videos out of the United States populate YouTube and can inform news coverage, he said Canadians shouldn't expect to see the same thing happen here.
"I think Canadians probably are going to be upset by this because the expectations are not going to align with how they think the camera footage will be available, especially following critical incidents involving police," he said.
The national police force first announced its plan to equip between 10,000 and 15,000 officers with body-worn cameras back in 2020, as protests against police brutality were erupting around the world in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis that year.
The force originally planned to roll out the cameras in 2021, but it took longer than expected to award the first contract and conduct pilot testing in the field. Last year, the RCMP announced it was moving on to another vendor, further delaying the rollout.
Detachments in Nova Scotia, Nunavut and Alberta already have deployed the cameras for field testing.
The federal government has committed nearly $240 million over six years to get the program running and $50 million annually in operating funding.
The RCMP said its will begin recovering costs from its contract partners, municipalities and provinces, beginning in 2024-25, when and where the service is operational.
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With files from Raffy Boudjikanian