The Lion’s Roar / Megan Simon
The Univeristy Police Deparment has been issued body cameras for each officer to wear while on duty. The body cameras will be used to help strengthen the department and increase safety on campus.
 

The University Police Department is using technology to aid them in enhancing the safety of both students and officers, taking an innovative step towards modernization of law enforcement.

With the help of the university, the police department will be issued WatchGuard body cameras in early October. Already, 25 cameras have been purchased at a cost of 1,000 dollars each. The UPD plans to conduct a training session for officers on how to use the body cameras and the policies centered around using the piece of technology, such as when to turn it on and off and when to use it. 

Chief of the University Police Department Harold Todd believes the body cameras will be a good addition to the department.

“I think it’s going to do several things for the police department and assist us,” said Todd. “One, it’s going to strengthen the accountability of our police officers, knowing that their actions are recorded when they have contact with the citizens during traffic stops, interrogations and searches.”

In addition to increasing the accountability of officers, the body cameras are expected to deter confrontational situations.

“I think it’s going to hopefully prevent any confrontational situations,” said Todd. “Whenever you know you are being videotaped, professionalism often comes out whenever your actions are documented. I think it’s going to assist in preventing confrontations with students on campus. It’s going to help resolve conflicts officers have whenever citizens make complaints, like, ‘the officer didn’t talk to me the way he should’ or ‘the officer didn’t tell me this.’ We will have documentation to resolve those conflicts of, ‘did the officer really do this or not.’ Whenever an officer has interaction, the camera will be on.”

Officers will be required to turn their cameras on whenever they engage in a situation, such as traffic violations, and to turn it back off when the situation is over and dealt with. This helps if there is a question about a certain situation and shows transparency on how and why the department carries out certain things.

Officers will not have access to any of the recordings. Once every couple weeks, if there is no incident that requires viewing the recordings, the footage is downloaded by the administrative staff of the UPD and put into the individual officer’s folder. Todd stresses they are trying to maintain as much privacy as possible while establishing transparency. 

The body cameras will also help improve the department’s performance and training. 

“I think it’s going to strengthen officer performance, the way they do their job,” said Todd. “We can use these interactions in the recording as part of a training tool. We can look and see if an officer is doing very well or needs to improve.”

Since the body cameras are a new concept for not only this department but others implementing the same technology, there is little research found on the policies and pros and cons involving this technology. This is mainly due to body cameras not being a usual piece of technology utilized by most police departments. 

Even though there is little research regarding the use of body cameras, the police department has found few cons.

“The negatives in it are, of course, if you are interviewing a victim of a physical altercation or a sexual assault, we would try to get their permission first before we record them,” said Todd. “We wouldn’t want to record that and have that come out one day. We would have to use some discretion there. There are not a lot of cons that we found out yet. There is not a lot of literature out there to see if there is a wrong way to do it or right way to do it. But, whatever the cons are in this, I think the pros outweigh them.”

For more information about the University Police Department and body cameras, call 985-549-3835.