In 18 months or less, RCMP staff across the country will have one more tool on their toolbelt to help solve crime: body cameras. Manitoba’s official rollout of the new device began on November 22 with the Steinbach detachment. In that city, 33 officers are already using the cameras.
Officers with the St. Pierre-Jolys detachment are expected to be outfitted with the cameras within the next two months.
The body camera is a small black box that clips to the officer’s vest in one of two locations in the abdominal area. It has the capability to capture both video and audio recordings.
Each camera has an impressive 12- to 14-hour battery life, extending well beyond most officers’ individual shifts.
It operates in two modes. When not manually activated by the officer, the camera is still recording but only for 30-second increments which continually overwrite the previous 30-second recording.
When the officer initiates activation, it begins a continuous recording until it is manually deactivated again. This lengthier recording will include the 30-second clip taken just prior to activation.
Audio is only initiated when the camera has been manually activated.
Sargent Paul Manaigre is the media relations officer for the Manitoba RCMP. He met with The Citizen to demonstrate the usefulness of the new device.
“I can have it on for two minutes or I can have it on for six hours, depending on what I’m dealing with,” says Manaigre. “The policy in Manitoba is [for] any encounters with the public, the officer has to record.”
The body cam is not a pilot project, he adds. It’s here to stay.
First initiated by the federal government about four years ago, it’s taken this long to approve a prototype, establish a supplier, and build policy around the device’s use in Canada.
The idea of the body cam for law enforcement use is not new. Manaigre says law enforcement in the United States have been using them for a long time.
“When you’re watching U.S. news and you see police body cam footage, chances are this is what they’re using,” Manaigre says of the device. “They’ve been doing it for years.”
A big benefit of using the device is to provide RCMP officers with an added level of personal protection and accountability.
“RCMP get a lot of frivolous complaints,” Manaigre says. “In my 29 years, I’ve seen a lot of that. But some of them are legitimate, so it keeps officers accountable. Hopefully we can reduce the number of complaints against officers.”
The company providing the cameras is also the one providing the federal government with online data storage services.
When an RCMP officer returns his camera to the charging port at the end of their shift, any recorded data on that device is uploaded into safe storage.
“Once it’s [uploaded], it all goes to our servers in Winnipeg. The officer has the ability to ask to see and review it. He doesn’t have the ability to manipulate or edit it.”
Manaigre says seven new full-time civil servant jobs were created to manage the video and audio data, and to curate it all. Audio for important data will be transcribed onto documents that are easily sharable between departments.
Manaigre says he ran a trial video on his own camera. Approximately one and a half minutes of recording required almost 50 megabytes of data storage.
“So you can imagine what six to eight hours [of recording] per shift per member would require. I don’t think the federal government could even manage [that level of data storage].”
All of this stored audio and video, Manaigre says, will be admissible in court, which means the seven human data processors will have their work cut out for them.
“Eventually, once all of the officer training is done, their job is going to be focused on data [management]. You can imagine how many requests we’re going to get for disclosures for Crown defence. ‘For court purposes’ will probably be the biggest [request].”
The body camera is not an inexpensive tool to add to the RCMP toolkit. Manaigre says the total project rollout cost the federal government around $240 million.
The cameras are being leased from an American-based company and not purchased outright. Manaigre says the lease comes to about $3,000 per camera.
On top of that, the he says it will take about $50 million annually to keep the program running. He anticipates that the feds will look to provinces and municipalities to help subsidize these costs.
But Manaigre says it’s important that the general public recognize the role these new devices will play in their own safety and well-being.
“People may become fearful of interacting with police. But that’s not why the camera is there. It’s there to be an evidence-recording tool, to gather statements, to keep the person we’re talking to safe and to keep us safe.”
Unlike cell phone cameras used by the public, Manaigre says the RCMP body cam is not bound by privacy laws when the officer is acting within the scope of his duties. In this case, the officer does not require anyone’s express permission to record them.
While most Manitobans can expect to see the camera devices being worn over the coming weeks and months, there are some areas where rollout will take a little longer.
Regions of northern Manitoba, for instance, will require major internet infrastructure improvements before the cameras will be useful.
As far as Manaigre is aware, the city of Winnipeg will not be investing in a similar body cam program for their urban police department at this point.
