Edmundston police begin body camera pilot

Another New Brunswick municipal police force is starting to use body-worn cameras. 

Edmundston police Chief Alain Lang says the force started testing two models of cameras in March. The force aims to select one model and purchase about 15. 

"We like it. We love it," Alain Lang said in an interview Wednesday. 

Lang said the force will use the equipment in part as an accountability tool and also as another way to gather evidence. He pointed to impaired driving cases where officers often will testify in court about visual cues and a driver's behaviour. 

"It's easy for a police officer to stand in in court and say, well, he had blood red eyes, and slurred speech and the smell of alcohol. But when you see it on the video, it really shows you how the body language of a person, the way the person was. So it gives us more evidence also to prove our case."

The force, which has 33 officers including the chief, has used cameras in its patrol cars and microphones on officers, but Alain said sometimes there would be technical issues such as audio that wasn't synchronized with the video.

Edmundston wasn't using body cameras when one of its officers fatally shot Chantel Moore during a wellness check in June 2020. The shooting happened on a balcony outside Moore's apartment late at night with only the officer serving as a direct eyewitness.

An inquest into Moore's death is expected to take place May 16 in Fredericton. An inquest into the shooting death of Rodney Levi by an RCMP officer in June 2020 led to a recommendation that force speed up deployment of body cameras.

Lang said the Bathurst force was considering the cameras for several years, but the shooting contributed to the decision to move ahead. 

St. Thomas University criminology professor Michael Boudreau said people who may not trust the police view the cameras as a good way to increase police accountability by providing recordings of incidents. 

"If there had been body-worn camera evidence, maybe we would have been able to understand better why the officer did what he did," Boudreau said of the shooting of Chantel Moore. 

But he said one of the issues with the cameras relates to when they are used. 

"There isn't a clear policy across the country in terms of how they're used," Boudreau said. 

"So are they always on? So when an officer starts their patrol or starts their shift, do they turn it on automatically and then turn off when the officer ends their shift? Or are they left at the discretion of the police officer to turn on at a particular time and incident? And if so, what if the officer forgets to turn the camera on?"

Lang said a policy sets out when officers must activate the cameras to save footage, such as mental health calls, when carrying out arrests or ongoing crimes like a robbery.

He said the policy wouldn't require activating the cameras for a wellness check. However, he said the cameras have a mechanism that allows an officer to keep footage after an event even if it wasn't pre-set to save. 

"It's called recording after the fact and it would still have seen the incident," Lang said. 

He said the policy will also address how to protect the privacy of people who are recorded and storage and retention of the footage. Canada's privacy commissioners have raised concerns with the cameras, including whether they are continuously recording. 

One service the force is testing uses a local server to store the footage, while another uses cloud-based storage. 

Lang said in the case of a murder investigation, the footage may need to be retained for decades, while lesser crimes may only require keeping it for several years. 

Lang, who is also president of the New Brunswick Association of Police Chiefs, said his community joins Saint John, Fredericton, Kennebecasis Valley and Bathurst in using the cameras.

The RCMP plan to start deploying body cameras to its officers nation-wide starting this year after delays in hitting a 2021 target.