Prince George RCMP officers will soon be wearing body-worn cameras.
The RCMP unveiled its country-wide roll-out plan Thursday and Prince George will be among 86 detachments in Canada to begin using the cameras over the next two months, starting on Monday.
Deployment of cameras will be expanded to 1,000 more officers per month, with 63 more detachments using them in January, with 80 more to be added in February. By March, 50 per cent of the country’s detachments will be using cameras and the phased-in implementation will reach 90 per cent of detachments by November 2025.
Officers will be required to activate their cameras as soon as they unbuckle their seat belts whenever they are responding to a call for service.
"The rollout of body-worn cameras to Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers is another step towards building a more modern and accountable RCMP and enhancing trust between the RCMP and the communities it serves," said RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme, in a media release.
Whenever possible, officers will advise the public when their camera is operating. A red light will indicate when the camera is on.
They will not be used for 24-hour surveillance, strip-searches or internal body-cavity searches, or in incidents of a sensitive nature. They also won’t be used when officers are taking formal statements or in religious places.
The video will be stored in a managed cloud-based service provided by the vendor, Axon Public Safety Canada Inc.
Officers will not be able to edit or delete the video footage.
If a complaints commission or court of law requires access to body-cam video, if, for instance, there is a complaint about a specific officer’s conduct, that video can be shared through a secure link.
The RCMP are guided by the Privacy Act in regards to disclosure of the evidence the cameras record. In some cases videos will be released to media outlet when public interest outweighs the privacy of the individual. Through the Privacy Act, individuals can request footage taken of them by the police.
Cameras will be replaced every 30 months. Eventually, the national police force will have between 10,000 and 15,000 body-worn cameras in use.
The body-worn camera project is funded by the federal government’s 2020 commitment to the RCMP to provide $238.5 million over six years with an additional $50 million annually in operating funding.
Body cams are currently in use by municipal police forces across Canada, including Vancouver, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto.
The RCMP has already field-tested the cameras in 11 detachments.
