NYPD to implement body cams on all 23,000 officers by 2019

The NYPD says it plans to implement body cameras to all 23,000 of its officers by 2019.

New York, one of the largest cities in the country, lags behind other cities as they have limited experience and zero cameras are currently in place.

NYPD body cameras

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio says his body camera plan, announced during a proposed labor deal last month with the police officer’s union, is critical to restoring trust between officers and the communities they serve, “creating an atmosphere of transparency and accountability for the good of all.”

NBC reports:
A federal judge ordered the NYPD to try out body cameras as part of a 2013 ruling that found the department was wrongly targeting minorities with its stop and frisk tactic. The 2014 killing of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and other deaths at the hands of police around the U.S. led to increased demands that officers be issued wearable cameras to deter misconduct and document shootings and other clashes.

In New York, the nation’s largest police department has only experimented with the cameras on small scale, starting with a 54-camera pilot program that ended last March. The larger roll-out, part of the federal order, began in earnest at the end of 2014 following the end of court appeals. The aim is to have 1,000 cameras deployed to 20 precincts around the city this year. About 5,000 cameras would be deployed by 2018.

Installation

The department plans to install the cameras and use lessons learned on the ground to modify the program as needed. Some of the largest challenges are storage and access – when are officers allowed to turn the camera on and off, and who gets access to that footage.

“There are strong privacy interests to be considered in what is recorded and whether body camera footage is publicly disclosed,” said Lawrence Byrne, the department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters.

But the body cameras won’t solve a police department’s problems, they’ll only help reveal them, said Frank Merenda, a former NYPD captain who is now an assistant professor of criminal justice at Marist College. He said there should be as much effort put toward new policing efforts as there is in implementing the cameras to officers across the nation.

“You don’t want to just shine a light on these problems; you want to solve them, too.”