Nearly 300 Edmonton police officers will soon be equipped with body-worn cameras.
Officers began wearing the cameras on Tuesday. A total of 280 officers will be issued cameras through the phased rollout, including those who began wearing them in July 2023 as part of a pilot program. During that pilot, police said they found the presence of cameras de-escalated a lot of situations.
The new officers being issued cameras work in units with “high levels of public interaction,” according to Deputy Chief Darren Derko with the EPS community policing bureau.
This includes officers from the public safety unit, crime suppression branch, northeast division patrol, west division patrol, southwest division patrol, Whyte Avenue beats, gang suppression, the commercial vehicle investigation unit and the traffic enforcement section.
“We also wanted to cross-section it across EPS. Because as we start to roll it out, we’re going to get a good perspective on how it’s being used and how much it’s being used and where the benefits are,” Derko said.
In March 2023, the Alberta government announced its plan to require all police services in the province to use body cameras.
Derko said the goal of the cameras is to increase transparency and accountability.
“Some of the anticipated outcomes of using body-worn cameras include increasing transparency, reducing unfounded allegations of police misconduct while this increases public trust and confidence in EPS,” he said. “Overall, they aim to create a more efficient accountability process and reduced use of force incidents for both officers and the public.
“Quite often when video is taken by the public, it only gives a small fraction of the occurrence or the confrontation that’s occurred between the police officer and the subject. This is going to give us the fulsome picture.”
How do the cameras work?
The Axon Body 4 cameras will be mounted on the front of an officer’s uniform and always run in “passive” mode, according to Insp. Kurt Martin with the EPS information management and compliance branch.
Passive mode means the cameras will always record video, but not audio. Officers have been directed to turn on the camera to record full audio and video when they believe an interaction with the public will become “investigative or enforcement in nature,” Martin said.
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“Once the officer recognizes the nature of the interaction – is it going to be enforcement or investigative in nature? – they should automatically be turning it on at that point,” Martin explained.
“But if it’s a police officer who’s just having coffee and having a regular interaction with a regular citizen, that’s really not investigative or enforcement in nature. It’s just a conversation. They probably would not record that. If the citizen wanted to have that conversation recorded for some purpose, I guess they could ask that and the officer would have the discretion to turn that on.”
Martin said this policy is in line with other police services that currently use body-worn cameras.
Derko said officers will also do their own critical thinking.
“They’re encouraged to turn it on every time there’s a public interaction, although policing is very dynamic and things could happen really quickly and they have not even had a chance to turn it on,” Derko said.
“If it’s a higher type of crime or something where they should have been turning it on and they had time to do it and didn’t, there could be disciplinary action for sure.”
Derko said once the camera is turned on, it goes back 30 seconds and records from there.
While not legally required to do so, officers have been instructed to inform the public when an interaction is being recorded whenever possible.
“This is part of why we’re doing this – to make sure that the public is aware when they see an officer that is wearing body-worn cameras, assume that it’s probably going to be recorded,” Derko said.
How much and how long will video be stored?
As mentioned above, the cameras will not be recording full audio and video for the officer’s entire shift.
“We’re not storing the entire content of an officer’s day because if we were to think of a 12-hour shift and how much video would actually be created, that is a lot of video and a lot of data to manage, which really, a lot of that is not really going to be relevant to an investigation,” Martin said.
Any video recorded in the “passive mode” can be downloaded for 18 hours after it’s captured, Derko said.
“If something happens and it’s just passively recording we have 18 hours to download it before it’s rewritten over. And again, it’s just because of the data storage,” he said.
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When it comes to how long video will be kept by the EPS, it depends on the investigation. All recorded video will be saved for two years for regular public interactions. If an investigation results in criminal charges, Martin said it will be kept longer.
“If it’s something like a theft or mischief under $5,000, we would keep that for about 10 years. But if it’s something like a homicide, we would keep that indefinitely. So it really depends on what’s being investigated,” Martin said.
When will video be released publicly?
Police said video captured from the cameras will be released when it’s in the public interest to do so.
Speaking hypothetically, Derko said if a camera was recording during a police shooting where the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team was investigating, ASIRT would have to give the EPS permission to release any video of the interaction.
“If releasing the video is going to jeopardize the investigation in any way, we probably won’t release it,” Derko said. “If there’s an ASIRT investigation ongoing, we would have to make sure that they approve the release of any video and what that looks like.
“The body-worn camera, if it captures that incident that ASIRT is investigating, that will now be their evidence for the investigation. They control that evidence and they’ll be able to decide what they can or can’t release.”
How much does the body-worn camera program cost?
The full service-wide implementation of the body-worn cameras is expected to cost about $12 million, according to Derko.
“As we learn from this one and we’re able to secure some funding – we’ll be looking internally, finding efficiencies from within for budget money,” he said. “Provincial government, we’re working with them as well to see how they’re going to be able to support this … as well as we’ll have ongoing talks with city council as this starts to roll out.”
Derko went on to say that while the cameras will not solve every problem, he is excited about the rollout.
“It still has limitations. It’s not going to be the answer to everything, but it’s going to give us the audio, it’s going to give us all the information that led up to that confrontation or what happened. I think it’s going to be a really good tool.”
There is no timeline for when all front-line EPS officers will be wearing the cameras.
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