Last December at the height of protests over policing, the New York Police Department launched a pilot program to test the use of body cameras on 54 officers at various precincts.
Now the NYPD’s Inspector General says the department needs to make a number of policy changes before rolling out more cameras. That means addressing concerns about issues such as how long the NYPD stores footage and how to limit recording some crime victims, according to a report the Inspector General’s Office released Thursday.
"Officers were confused about, in some cases…when to turn the camera on, when to turn it off," Inspector General Philip Eure said at a press conference Thursday to talk about his office’s review of the pilot program.
The report is more of a policy review than an actual analysis of how the cameras have worked so far and it’s unclear what impact the technology has had.
Eure said he doesn’t know how many interactions the test officers recorded and how often the footage has been used in court or disciplinary cases.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for that information.
The current pilot is separate from the body camera program a federal judge ordered in response to a lawsuit over the department’s stop and frisk practices. The court-ordered program will include thousands of officers and is at least a year from launching. The department and a court-appointed monitor are still working out the details of that program.
The NYPD’s public information office released a statement from Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis on the Inspector General’s report.
“We are reviewing the report and we will continue to work closely with the monitor and other interested parties in going forward with the body-camera pilot project and initiatives,” Davis is quoted as saying.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union, released a statement from its president, Patrick Lynch:
“Many serious concerns about the use of body cameras have been raised on both sides of the issue. Before any decision is made about their implementation in this City, the issue needs to be extensively studied. Cameras should not become another vehicle to make the job of policing any more difficult.”
