Not everyone believes the program is ready for the city’s streets.

In an op-ed article published by The New York Times on Thursday, two lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the court order predicted that the city’s guidelines would give “police officers and their supervisors too much discretion as to when to turn the cameras on” and would make it “easy for them to tailor their statements and reports to match videos.” Last week, the lawyers asked the judge overseeing the litigation to order changes to the policy. She dismissed the request as premature.

Nancy Hoppock, the assistant deputy commissioner in charge of the Police Department’s Risk Management Bureau, said that a test run on Wednesday had allayed concerns over whether crucial moments might be lost when low-level encounters escalated rapidly.

“Based on the video that I saw last night, I’m not worried at all because these officers are doing exactly what they are trained to do, which is, when in doubt, you turn it on,” she said of the cameras.

Officers trained for two days on how to use the cameras at the Police Academy in Queens, sitting through lectures, watching video of common situations and practicing with the devices, said Benjamin Tucker, the first deputy police commissioner. The classroom training, which officials are still refining, will be followed by 90 days of field training in the precinct, which stretches north into Inwood.

Fifty-eight officers from the 34th Precinct are part of the pilot program, which will include 1,200 officers in 20 precincts by the end of the year.

After a year, officers equipped with cameras will be measured against an equal number of officers at 20 precincts that do not have cameras in areas such as job performance, citizen complaints and arrests. The pilot program is designed to allow officials to determine with a high degree of certainty that any differences they observe can be attribute to the cameras and not to other factors, such as leadership changes.

Still, questions persist about how the mayor and the Police Department will handle challenges that may arise from requests for footage from episodes that range from routine to headline-grabbing.