Long Beach police officers who wore body cameras as part of a yearlong test used force less often, and the number of complaints against them plummeted, according to authorities.

In November 2016, the police department assigned body cameras to about 40 officers in Long Beach’s west patrol division under a pilot program.

After finishing the test in November last year, the department discovered the officers used force 14 percent less often and received 62 percent fewer complaints.

But the officers wearing the cameras weren’t the only ones affected.

Across the entire western division, officers used force 31 percent less and there were 56 percent fewer complaints, according to police officials.

The department isn’t sure those reductions are only because of the body cameras, but police officials theorized that officers or civilians may have changed their behavior because of the possibility they’d be filmed.

“These, however, are only theories, and it could be due to external factors specific to west division that were not measured and beyond our knowledge at this time,” Long Beach Police Department Bureau Chief Jason Campbell said.

Campbell revealed the statistics Thursday night at a meeting of the Long Beach City Council’s public safety committee.

He cautioned against drawing too many firm conclusions from the numbers, noting there’s no control group for comparison.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “The noted reductions do support previous research on the subject of body worn camera technology’s ability to reduce complaints and uses of force.”

Now that the yearlong test is over, the police department plans to expand the pilot program and assign cameras to all the patrol officers in the west division, Campbell said.

Long Beach police divide the city into four patrol divisions: north, south, east and west. The west division encompasses the area west of the 710 Freeway and a large swath of Central Long Beach.

Officials are also considering options for a citywide rollout.

The department is working on a more detailed presentation for the full City Council to decide what to do next, according to Campbell.

Councilwoman Suzie Price, who chairs the public safety committee, has championed the use of body cameras in Long Beach.

When Campbell highlighted that 38 out of 63 nearby police agencies don’t have their own body camera programs, Price pushed back.

She said the department shouldn’t be talking about how challenging body cameras have been for some other departments.

“We should be thinking about how do we learn from the ones who have implemented body cameras because we are going to implement body cameras,” Price said.

Campbell said the department encountered some serious technical hurdles when they first started testing the cameras, but now 90 percent of the equipment issues have been worked out.

If the city wants to make body cameras a permanent feature, police will need to hire a dedicated staff to do things like managing and storing the videos and enforcing policies, Campbell said.

Adding body camera footage into the mix also significantly increases the workload for detectives investigating crimes after the fact, Deputy Chief Rich Conant said at the meeting.

The policy governing the cameras’ use, which the department is still adjusting, is also key to a workable program, according to Campbell.

“It must be clear, it must be known and it must be enforced,” he said.