BOSTON (WHDH) - The Boston Police Department has started training its officers on how to operate body cameras before they are officially equipped with them for field action later this spring, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Friday.
The decision to move forward with implementing the body cameras comes after the successful completion of a one-year pilot program. Some officers in South Boston and Dorchester are already sporting the cameras.
“It’s about building trust. It’s about giving police officers more options as far as their uniform, and having the opportunity to have body cameras there for backing up,” he said.
Walsh says he saw benefits from the pilot program last year, one most notably being a decrease in officer complaints across the city.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to the camera, it comes down to the individual wearing the camera,” Walsh said. “It comes down to the interaction between the community and the police department.”
The cameras record audio and video and upload the data to the cloud once officers place them in a docking bay at the end of their shift.
Despite Walsh’s support for rolling out the program, the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association isn’t onboard.
Union brass told 7News that they are upset that only patrolmen will have to wear cameras, not detectives or supervisors. They may ask for an arbitrator to step in.
Walsh expects officers to be on the streets with the cameras by late spring.
The Worcester Police Department launched a 6-month body camera pilot program earlier this week.
“We hope to use our body cameras to increase transparency, resolve complaints, de-escalate volatile situations, and improve our training. Our officers do amazing work day in and day out, and we have confidence that this will be captured in the footage,” the department said in a statement. “During the pilot, we will assess the effectiveness of the cameras and continue to study the most productive way to use them.”
Twenty officers who volunteered for the pilot program will be outfitted with body cameras during their regular work shifts from May to November.
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