Metro covered the ongoing debate about the Boston Police Department's body worn camera pilot program, set to begin in May or June 2016.
...even as Bostonians got the chance to weigh in at a series of informal public meetings this week, exactly how those cameras will be used is still unclear.
“We’re asking all these questions about the pilot and people don’t have answers,” said Segun Idowu, co-organizer of the Boston Police Camera Action Team, which has been advocating for the cameras since 2014. “And we’re a month away.”
Among them: whether police will be allowed to film inside people’s homes; whether footage of situations involving domestic abuse, children or the mentally ill will be taken; where, how and for how long all the police camera data will be stored.
But the chief concern from BPCAT and others is that the results of the pilot may be tainted. That’s because right now the only officers who will wear the cameras are those who volunteer to do so.
The “data will be skewed,” Idowu said, because “only the officers who are doing really, really great work” will sign up for the pilot, Idowu said. “And not the officers that we’re trying to hold accountable.”
Learn more about body worn cameras, our model policy, and where ACLU stands on the debate.
Full story: Boston police rolling out body cameras amid blurry policy picture
Date
Friday, April 29, 2016 - 6:45pmFeatured image
