On Thursday, September 15, shortly before his civilian bosses on the Toronto Police Services Board were to hold their regularly scheduled monthly meeting, police Chief Mark Saunders handed in the report from the year-long pilot project on body-worn cameras.
The 100-page plus document, Body-Worn Cameras: A Report On The Findings Of the pilot project to test the value and feasibility of body-worn cameras for police Officers in Toronto, was dated June 2016.
Why the report took three months to travel the short distance from the police chief’s office to the board chair’s office on the seventh floor of police headquarters is a mystery. The normal timetable for putting items on board agendas is ignored only in the most exceptional circumstances.
Must be budget season at headquarters.
In a companion report tabled at the board meeting, Saunders recommended including $500,000 in the capital budget “to cover the cost of a fairness commissioner and other external expertise required to effectively oversee, manage and analyse the body-worn camera non-binding Request for Proposals process, including the evaluation of proposals.”
Clearly, Saunders wants to equip his officers with cameras. But on what basis?
The known costs are estimated at $20 million in the first year and $85 million over 10 years. By Saunders’s own acknowledgement, these figures do not take into account other factors like administrative and technical requirements or additional staffing needs, to name just a few. The true price tag for the system will be a whole lot more.
The board has suspended discussion and any decision on the issue until its October meeting.
But the more important question is whether a real-time record of interactions between the police and the public serve any critical purpose.
Will it deter racial profiling and excessive use of force or ensure greater transparency and accountability?
It’s been argued that body-worn cameras will increase public trust in police. This is why 95 per cent of U.S. police departments use or plan to use them. In the wake of police killings of a number of unarmed African Americans and widespread criticism of police conduct and lack of accountability, the Obama administration has allocated some $250 million to finance the deployment of cameras across U.S. police forces.
In Toronto, the inquest into the deaths of Reyal Jardine-Douglas, Sylvia Klibingaitis and Michael Eligon, as well as the police service’s own Police And Community Engagement Review (PACER), recommended that use of the cameras be studied and considered.
The year-long pilot project, carried out between March 2015 to March 2016, fails to make a convincing case.
The project involved a small group of 85 police constables and sergeants who wore the cameras for some period of time during the pilot period.
Public response was based primarily on 20,000 surveys mailed out before the pilot (with 3,399 responding), and 25,000 after the pilot (4,141 responding).
Some 4,285 surveys were mailed to those who had contact with an officer wearing a camera, but only 319 responded.
While the larger group of respondents “felt” or “believed” that the camera could be an effective tool, among those who had direct contact with officers, there was less support.
The response from officers who wore the camera was at best lukewarm. From officers who did not wear the cameras but were used for comparison, the reaction, according to the evaluation report, was “not very positive.”
At the same time, and more troubling, it was found that officers made more arrests when the camera was watching than they did at other times, when they might use their discretion to issue a warning.
As a piece of technology, too, the cameras had problems, meaning it’s not fail-safe. Unreliable battery life and video corruption are just two of the many problems that the pilot encountered, raising serious questions about the reliability of the technology.
Perhaps the bigger question is this: are these devices really the answer to enhancing public trust and confidence?
About 10 years ago, the board directed the police to install in-car cameras in all police cars. It followed up by requiring all members of the police service to wear name badges. Does anyone know whether or to what extent these tools improved public trust and accountability?
It is known, of course, that in-car cameras are not always turned on and name badges have been removed. The service’s response has tended to be a minor slap on the wrist.
No doubt Justice Michael Tulloch’s review of police oversight, which began coincidentally (or not) the day before Saunders tabled his report, will prove more important in terms of transparency and accountability than yet another gadget.
In the meantime, given the lack of convincing public or officer response and identification of numerous quite serious deficiencies, the board may want to take a page from its own history to determine its next step.
Dissatisfied with the results of the pilot on the use of tasers conducted by then police chief Julian Fantino, the board directed incoming chief Bill Blair to do a second, larger and more rigorous study. It also sought expert advice from a variety of sources.
Only after more than two years of consideration did the board agree to a limited deployment of tasers subject to very clear rules, extensive training and public reporting.
The case for mass use of body-worn cameras by Toronto’s police officers remains to be made.
Alok Mukherjee served as chair of the Toronto Police Services Board from 2005 to 2015.
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