Commish: Bodycams must be implemented gradually

WESTERN BUREAU:

Police Commissioner Dr Kevin Blake says the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is not resisting calls for its members to wear body-worn cameras for the sake of accountability but is insisting that the implementation must be done in stages to preserve its effectiveness.

Blake, who was speaking at the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (MBCCI) members’ meeting on Wednesday in Montego Bay, St James, commented on law-enforcement plans to use science and technology in its crime-fighting efforts.

“I do not want it to be believed that the body-worn camera is something that was thrust upon us and that we are resisting it. Body-worn cameras for a security company with 30 or 40 security guards, that is easy implementation, but not many police forces in the United States are as big as ours, and with 8,000 police officers streaming video, where every video that is captured can be subject to a court proceeding and can be evidential, the protection, handling, and storing of it [recorded data] is critical,” said Blake.

“When we started first, we made a mistake and we just pinned some body-worn cameras on persons, and we had some computers that you were downloading things on. We have disparate (different types) videos across various different computers, and if one of those goes down, then they lose everything,” said Blake. “Pinning a body-worn camera on a policeman is the easy part. Building the infrastructure to manage that data and building the procedure and the policies around it, all of that is the difficult part, and that is what we have been doing.”

Last November, the Independent Commission of Investigations’ (INDECOM) Commissioner Hugh Faulkner called for the Government to prioritise the acquisition of bodycams for the security forces. At that time, data from INDECOM revealed that 119 civilians were shot and killed and another 86 shot and injured by agents of the State between January and October 2023. However, there was only one case where a bodycam was used during a shooting.

INDECOM’s concern was raised seven months after National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang indicated during the Sectoral Debate in Parliament that 400 bodycams had been deployed to the JCF and that another 1,000 would be acquired during the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Building on previous initiatives

Blake also told Wednesday’s meeting that while the JCF has crime-fighting strategies for every police division, including St James, which has Jamaica’s highest murder tally, those plans must be carried out cautiously while building on previous initiatives.

“We have plans for every parish, every division, every city. We have to be mindful, though, and be guarded against running into a new post like a bull in a China shop and destroy every good thing that was happening before, so we have to build on it. We are running a relay, and every leg must be faster than the leg before,” said Blake.

“Many of the things that are being done were things being executed from a developed plan, and those are being done now … the results that you are seeing now are not accidental. We are experiencing an over 30 per cent reduction in murders, coming from an increase earlier this year, in just St James, and every division in Area One (St James, Trelawny, Hanover, and Westmoreland] is seeing significant reductions as a result of the plan,” added Blake.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com