Body-worn cameras being issued to police are “already outdated”

A senior executive in the security industry has questioned the choice of body-worn cameras being rolled out for use by 22,000 Metropolitan police officers.

Scotland Yard has confirmed that the cameras will be phased in across 32 London boroughs over the coming months.

Zak Doffman, CEO at video management solutions company Digital Barriers, said that while he welcomed the decision to equip officers with body-worn cameras, the kit being used was already outdated and did little to enhance officers’ safety or situational awareness.

“We welcome the roll-out of body-worn cameras and their role in dramatically reducing the number of complaints against police officers,” he said. “The current generation of body-worn cameras are useful for allocating liability and modifying public and staff behaviours.

However, they do absolutely nothing to improve officer safety or enhance situational awareness. That requires the ability to stream the footage in real time to a nearby colleague or command and control centre. Members of the public can already stream live to the likes of Facebook and Periscope, so why are we equipping law-enforcement with a “black box” that is already outdated?”

The cameras are being provided by Axon Public Safety UK as part of a three-year contract worth £3.4m. Digital Barriers is in the market for similar contracts with its EdgeVis video streaming technology.

The deployment, which was initially scheduled for earlier this year, is expected to be completed by next summer.

The rollout follows a successful trial, public consultation and study by the University of Cambridge, which reported a 93% drop in complaints made against officers wearing body cameras. However, Doffman points out that the study “found that assaults against officers actually increased by 15% when they were wearing a body-worn camera.”

The Met says the cameras have made prosecutions easier, notably in domestic abuse cases, where offenders have been more likely to submit guilty pleas when they realise their actions have been captured on camera.

Attached to the breast of officers’ uniforms the cameras will not record permanently and will have a flashing red circle to indicate when they are recording. Officers will inform members of the public when they are being recorded as soon as is practical. The cameras will emit a beeping noise when recording is activated.

“The technology offers greater transparency for those in front of the camera as well as behind it,” said Scotland Yard. “Londoners can feel reassured during their interactions with the police, whilst allowing us to demonstrate the professionalism of our officers in their many challenging and contentious interactions, such as the use of stop and search.”

Met Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “Body-worn video will support our officers in the many challenging situations they have to deal with, at the same time as building the public’s confidence. What we do every day will be seen by the public – that has to be good.

“Our experience of using cameras already shows that people are more likely to plead guilty when they know we have captured the incident on a camera. That then speeds up justice, puts offenders behind bars more quickly and most importantly protects potential victims.

“Video captures events in a way that can’t be represented on paper in the same detail, a picture paints a thousand words, and it has been shown the mere presence of this type of video can often defuse potentially violent situations without the need for force to be used.”

But Zak Doffman of Digital Barriers said his company’s technology would have bestowed even greater advantages on the police force. “We have worked with intelligence, defence and law enforcement to develop a secure video transmission technology that uses 60% less bandwidth than standard technologies, making the addition of live streaming to a body-worn camera both technically and financially viable for police forces. The technology is called EdgeVis and has been widely deployed in every conceivable remote and hostile location from jungle borders to desert battlefields, as well as across major cities around the world.”

Two years ago we asked a range of security experts for their appraisals of the benefits and risks for the deployment of body-worn cameras.

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