Editorial | Use the body cams

It is not difficult to assume that the police are in a mode of passive resistance to the introduction or wearing of body cameras.

Otherwise, people who follow these things would have to find a credible explanation for why in not even a single case of police shooting so far this year, as well as in 2023 – even those that occur in planned operations – there is no video evidence of the incident.

The Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), the body that reviews police shootings, has, as it reminded last week, been a stuck record on this matter. The constabulary should heed INDECOM’s call for change lest a deeper perception develops that the police are stonewalling, leading to an erosion in the confidence and public trust the constabulary has been working so hard to regain.

At the same time, the police commissioner, Kevin Blake, must keep a keen eye on the rise in fatal shootings by the constabulary and ensure that Jamaica does not head back to the old days when the numbers were stratospheric and citizens routinely accused the police of extrajudicial killings.

This observation is not to downplay the difficult circumstances that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) faces. It is an appreciation of the JCF as a professional organisation that ought to be held to the highest standard of accountability, which the institution itself wants to be.

FITS AND STARTS

Jamaica has been talking about its police wearing body cams for over a dozen years. It has gone about it in fits and starts.

However, based on the most recent public pronouncements by officials, the JCF should possess at least 1,400 body-worn cameras for a force of 14,000, but only few of these, it appears, are ever deployed.

Dr Blake, who has a background in technology and who has been the police chief since March, claims that that is not because of a lack of commitment, but the complexity of implementing such a project.

“We have been working over the past two to three years building up that infrastructure, strengthening our ... data centre [and] ensuring that our network communications are adequate so that we can properly manage the products from these body-worn cameras,” he said in August.

While The Gleaner appreciates that situation, the argument does not, on its face, adequately explain the almost total absence of videos from police shootings, including operations that were pre-planned.

Further, that the system has not been fully built out does not mean that body cams are not being worn. Police officers have been filmed with cameras attached to their clothing, and videos have appeared on social media purporting to be from police body cams.

At a briefing last week, INDECOM recalled that last year, the police killed 155 people (up 16 per cent on 2022) and wounded another 66. A “remarkable feature” of the data, according to INDECOM’s deputy commissioner, Hamish Campbell, was that “not a single one involved the deployment of a working body-worn camera”.

“One camera was deployed in a fatal shooting incident, but the officer failed to turn it on …,” Mr Campbell said.

During the first 10 months of this year, there were 149 fatal shootings by the police. Fifty-eight, or 40 per cent, resulted from 50 planned operations, but body-worn cameras were used in none of these incidents

Mr Anthony reported that in four cases of non-lethal shooting, the officers were affixed with body cams, which were of no benefit.

“In three of those four, the officers did not turn the cameras on, and on the fourth occasion, the officer turned the camera on after the event,” he said.

DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW

Officers in these situations mostly claim that they were not trained to use the cameras although they wore them. That explanation is difficult to swallow.

Dr Blake, the commissioner, would forgive anyone who, even if wrongly, saw a worrying pattern in these statistics - one aimed at avoiding accountability. Which is completely contrary to the stance of Commissioner Blake in his August remarks.

He said then: “This idea that police don’t want to wear body-worn cameras because of whatever intention is nothing further from the truth because as I have always reminded my officers – and I have heard from the officers themselves – that if you don’t have a camera on, you may be the only one not recording an incident from your perspective.”

Jamaica records over 1,000 murders annually, for a homicide rate of over 50 per 100,000, placing it in the top five countries not at war for killings. The police often confront violent criminals.

However, not infrequently, citizens vehemently contradict police accounts of the circumstances surrounding fatal and non-fatal shootings by cops.

Beyond these complaints, the police must have a higher bar of accountability than the criminals against whom they protect citizens. Indeed, the police, too, are subject to the rule of law.

In that respect, body cameras are at once tools of accountability as well as shields for constables against false claims of misbehaviour. It is unfortunate, therefore, that notwithstanding any existing imperfections in the data capturing management system, the police, especially those involved in planned operations, would be deployed without all available body cams, or worse, fitted with them without being trained in their use.

Dr Blake must urgently address this matter.