Wednesday, June 24, 2020

RCMP union says cops are on board with body cameras plan

By Charlie Pinkerton. Published on Jun 19, 2020

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) member stationed on Dec. 12, 2018 in Calgary. (Christina Ryan/Calgary StarMetro)

RCMP officers won’t get in the way of a new plan by the national police agency to outfit cops with body cameras, the head of the officers’ union says, as long as careful discussion is had about the privacy concerns that come in tow with collecting the videos.

“(We’re) fully on board, fully aware that things need to change,” Brian Sauvé, the president of the National Police Federation (NPF), told iPolitics in a phone call on Thursday.

READ MORE: Trudeau says police body cameras are ‘what we need to move forward with’

Sauvé said he spoke with RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki about the proposal last week, which was also when she shared publicly her plan to more forward with equipping police with body-worn cameras.

“The commissioner has confirmed that the RCMP will engage in work and discussion with policing partners and the NPF on a broader rollout of body-worn cameras,” Dan Brien, a spokesperson for Lucki, said in a statement on June 8.

Sauvé said he expects the NPF and RCMP to work through issues about when cameras would be required to be activated. One approach for police in other jurisdictions has been to only turn their cameras on when they’re on a call.

“There’s a discussion around, and from our perspective is, do members have them on all the time? Are they allowed to turn them off if they get a phone call from their wife? When they use the washroom or when they’re having lunch – those personal time periods? Do we tie it into lights-and-sirens calls or do we leave it to the discretion of the member to turn on or off?” said Sauvé.

He also raised concerns about how evidence collected showing minors could be shown in court.

“It’s not that we’re against it – it’s just all of these things have never been done before, so it’s a matter of getting it right, respecting the privacy of Canadians, but also respecting the privacy of the members,” Sauvé added.

Some of Sauvé’s concerns about body cameras echo similar points in a report the federal Privacy Commissioner published in 2015 offering guidance for law enforcement that were thinking about implementing the policy.

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That report concluded that “the recording of individuals through the use of BWCs (body-worn cameras) raises a significant risk to individual privacy, and LEAs (law enforcement authorities) must be committed to only deploying BWCs to the degree and in a manner that respects and protects the general public’s and employees’ right to personal privacy.”

Sauvé noted that the RCMP and NPF have discussed a committee to establish how body cameras would be rolled out, but that the union hasn’t decided who it would like represented in the group yet.

Earlier in the same day that Lucki announced the RCMP would move forward intending to implement a body cameras in the force, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said they had spoken about it and agreed there was a need for the policy. Trudeau promised to raise the idea to the provinces later in the week. 
 
RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki speaks with reporters at a press conference on April 20 from West Block about the shooting in Portapique, N.S. Andrew Meade/iPolitics

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Equipping federal officers with body cameras was the first policy pushed forward by the federal government in response to weeks of protests in the U.S. and later for days in Canada following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

The government has been pressured by protestors across the country to undertake solution-seeking action against racism and police violence. Calls escalated after Trudeau joined a Parliament Hill protest on June 5, where he knelt with anti-Black racism protestors in a show of solidarity.

The statement from the RCMP days later said “the commissioner agrees it is critically important for Canadians to feel protected by the police.”

“(Lucki) is committed to take whatever steps are required to enhance trust between the RCMP and the communities we serve,” Brien said.

Pierre Paul-Hus, the Conservatives’ critic on public safety issues, said he supports the move to have police wearing body cameras, but would prefer to have the cost of equipping RCMP officers with cameras examined before the policy is rolled out.

The NPF is in the early goings of working toward a collective agreement with the Treasury Board (which is responsible for all of the core federal government’s collective bargaining and negotiations) to negotiate things like pay, employee benefits and resources.

(Sauvé said collective bargaining is in the early stages, while Treasury Board spokesperson said negotiations are expected to begin “soon.”)

READ MORE: What the RCMP’s new civilian advisory group will do at a moment of reckoning for police misconduct

The NPF was certified last July after a several-year fight. It represents around 20,000 RCMP officers, which by themselves are 30 per cent of police officers across all forces in

THIS IS A POLICE UNION I CAN SUPPORT AS DO MOST LEFT WING CANADIANS WE CALLED FOR IT TO CHANGE THE RCMP FROM BEING A MILITARY FORCE TO A CIVILIAN FORCE


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