As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to move toward equipping police with body-worn cameras, advocates, police leaders, politicians, privacy experts and the family of an Indigenous woman shot by police last week say the technology is not a silver bullet in ending systemic racism and addressing the over-policing of marginalized communities.
Trudeau said at a news conference Monday that body-worn cameras, which record police officers’ interactions with the public, could be used as tool for transparency amid allegations of racism and brutality.
However, the family of Chantel Moore, a 26-year-old Port Alberni woman shot by police in Edmundston, N.B., last week, said they would not trust video captured by a body-worn camera, fearing it could be manipulated by the police.
“I would not trust it as I know how the justice system works and even if people have evidence of police brutality, they say the victim/offender was resisting arrest or they assaulted the cop,” Moore’s grandmother Nora Martin said via text message. She and 11 members of Moore’s family arrived in New Brunswick on Monday in a search for answers about how a call for police to check on Moore’s well-being ended with her dead. Police allege Moore threatened the responding officer with a knife. Quebec’s independent police watchdog is investigating.
There’s little evidence that body-worn cameras reduce police violence and racial profiling, said B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director Harsha Walia, pointing to research in the United States.
Instead of putting more resources into police departments, governments should redirect that funding toward comprehensive health resources to support over-policed communities such as black and Indigenous people and the homeless population, she said.
“When we’re looking at social issues, such as people going through mental health distress, when we’re looking at the opioid crisis in B.C. and across this country, drug-related arrests, these are fundamentally public health issues. These are not issues that the police should be first responders to, they’re not equipped to do so,” Walia said. “So instead of putting more funding into police departments, we really need to be looking at building a much more robust care infrastructure when it comes to these particular issues that are plaguing our cities and our province.”
Victoria Police Chief Del Manak said body-worn cameras are expensive, raise major privacy concerns and will do nothing to rebuild the trust between police and marginalized communities.
The department’s focus, Manak said, is hiring officers who will treat people with dignity and regular training in cultural sensitivity. “What’s more important to me is the person behind body-worn cameras, the person who is going to turn it on and off,” he said.
Some Victoria police officers were outfitted with body-worn cameras in 2009 as part of a four-month pilot project but the cost, logistics around data storage and privacy concerns resulted in the department deciding not to adopt the technology.
Officers often enter the private homes of people in distress and the cameras might capture children or innocent bystanders in the background, Manak said. Blurring out people’s faces might raise even more concerns, he said.
“If you’re blurring images out, you need a tech to edit certain parts of the video but then your critics will say, ‘This video has been altered. What else did you edit out?’ ” Manak said.
He said he’s in constant dialogue with black community leaders, First Nations elders and the Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness about how to build lasting relationships between police and people of colour.
“When it comes to race relations with the black community, or any visible minority community, there is work to be done,” said Manak. He was among the thousands of people who attended the Peace Rally for Black Lives in Centennial Square Sunday, part of a world-wide anti-racism movement in response to the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Saanich Mayor Fred Haynes, also chair of the Saanich Police Board, welcomed the prime minister’s endorsement of body-worn cameras and hopes the federal and provincial government will pay for the equipment. The Saanich Police Department has looked into body-worn cameras but was deterred by the cost and data storage issues.
Haynes said building trust comes down to Saanich police officers being as diverse as the community they serve, and recruitment efforts are underway to address that issue.
Paul Manly, Green MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, has sponsored a petition to the federal government on behalf of a constituent that calls for RCMP officers to wear body cameras.
Manly agreed with Walia that body cameras do not necessarily change police behaviour but said they’re a tool for transparency and accountability.
“In this recent case of Chantel Moore, there was no witness. It’s the word of a police officer and a woman who is now deceased.”
Police departments should also focus on community policing and improved training around cultural sensitivity, Manly said.
Ron MacDonald, the chief civilian director of B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office, which probes police-involved deaths or serious injuries, said body-worn cameras could provide important evidence in police use-of-force cases. “I think there’s a large public interest for all officers to have body cameras and it would be important to help maintain the public’s confidence in our investigations and in the police in general.”
In the three years since he’s been in the position, MacDonald said he’s heard many accounts from Indigenous community members about “unfavourable interactions” with police. “It’s important for us to hear, it’s important for us to be aware of,” he said.
— With files from The Canadian Press
