The eyes have it- Culver City’s patrol car camera program has been a success since it was implemented over 10 months ago, says Culver City Police Chief Scott Bixby.
“It’s been very advantageous for us, not only from a complaint standpoint but also from a policing standpoint,” said Bixby.
Culver City is one of several police departments across the nation that has chosen to equip their patrol cars with late-model technology. Civil libertarians and activist groups have called for more departments to use car cameras as well as have police wear body cameras after several controversial arrests and shootings last year, primarily involving police and black suspects.
“There have been several times already when an issue came up with one of our officers” and the cameras were able to clarify exactly what happened in each instance, Bixby said, illustrating how cameras can work to the public’s as well as to an officer’s advantage.
Culver City police authorities say installing the cameras in patrol cars is becoming part of 21st century police work. “It’s good for our officers and it’s in line with the industry standard,” said Lt. Sam Agaiby in an interview last year.
Culver City will soon be joining big city police agencies like the Los Angeles Police Dept. in outfitting their officers with body cameras. “We’re looking forward to getting them, hopefully within six months,” Bixby said. “It’s another law enforcement tool that we can have at our disposal.”
A recent survey showed that almost 85% out of 785 of law enforcement officers interviewed are in favor of body cameras. The survey was conducted by Police One, an online law enforcement site and Taser International, a Scottsdale AZ. – based distributor and manufacturer of electrical weapons and body cameras.
The City Council must approve purchasing the body cameras, as it did with the dashboard technology.
Just over a week ago, the Long Beach City Council voted to approve a pilot program for its police officers to wear body cameras.
A 2012 University of Cambridge study indicated that technology can play an important role in deescalating potential dangerous situations between police officers and the public. It is the first such review of its kind.
Researchers chose the Rialto Police Dept. as it subject and reported that use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year’s figures. According to evidence from the study, police officers are deterred from improper uses-of-force or from most type of force when they are aware that an interaction is being filmed.
However, the authors of the report cautioned that the Rialto experiment is just one study and more data need to be gathered. Some critics say officers can turn the cameras off at specific times to not fully reflect what might have occurred during a particular incident.
The American Civil Liberties Union is taking a cautious view on the technology. “We will have to watch carefully to see how they are deployed and what their effects are over time,” wrote the ACLU’s Jay Stanly last March.