Money: it’s the “major challenge” highlighted in a Toronto Police Service report recommending body cameras for front-line officers. How will the force find the money to pay for the program and keep it afloat?

The report, released Thursday after a year-long pilot project, calls for equipping roughly 3,200 cops with body cams. But that would cost about $85 million over 10 years, which strikes some as too steep, given that a mayor-approved task force is currently looking for ways to trim $100 million from the $1-billion-plus annual police budget over three years.

Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack told the Star the “ship has sailed” on trying to stop the push for body-worn cameras, but he questioned the outsized price tag for a “feel-good project.”

“There’s no cost-benefit analysis that would warrant this. It’s that people want to feel good about what the police are doing and that Big Brother is watching the police,” he said.

Body cameras have emerged across North America as a popular means of improving police accountability and public trust in law enforcement. Advocates argue that video recordings of police interactions with community members can provide a clearer picture of what happened in a controversial incident — such as alleged over-the-top use of force. The report mentions such benefits, but cautions that the limited, one-year study of body-cam use was too narrow to be definitive. The report also mentions potential drawbacks — including the time lost from duties when officers must upload video from their cameras.

Dhun Noria, a doctor at the Scarborough Hospital who sits on the Toronto Police Board, said introducing new technology such as body cameras is part of “modernizing” the police force. It’s too early to know exactly how much it would cost, since buying cameras would involve a bidding process among technology companies, and it’s not known how many servers would be required to store the data. But Noria said the cost could come down as technology improves and becomes cheaper.

It’s worth the expense, she added, because of the benefits, particularly in building public trust, even as the city looks for ways to save money in the police budget.

“You’ll have to find the savings elsewhere,” she said.

Shelley Carroll, a Toronto city councillor who also sits on the board, agreed Friday that the estimated $85-million cost would be worth it if the cameras built public trust and deterred excessive use of force. But the report so far hasn’t convinced her.

“I need a deeper dive into the pilot (project) to know that down the road that’s actually going to happen,” she said.

Councillor Michael Thompson, a former member of the police board, said what drives up the cost is the number of police personnel. The $85-million estimate, he said, is a “dramatic number” that he expects would come down.

Defence lawyer and onetime mayoral candidate Ari Goldkind, who pushed for body cameras during his electoral campaign, echoed others in predicting a price drop. But he argued that a sizeable investment would be worthwhile overall because cameras could provide evidence that would make court proceedings and legal matters stemming from police action go more smoothly and quickly.

“There is literally no negative to this,” he said. “And the kicker is, good police officers want these cameras.”

But some question the efficacy of body-worn cameras. Laura Berger, director of the public safety program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said it’s not clear whether their touted benefits would actually play out in Toronto. Given the limited scope of the pilot project, there are no “hard metrics,” she said.

Berger argued that any decision to invest in cameras should be made in the context of the Ontario government’s current review of police accountability and transparency. There should be clear rules about how cameras are used, when officers are allowed to turn them off, and how the privacy of the public will be respected and preserved.

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“They’re not a substitute for other forms of increased accountability,” she said. “We should be cautious of the assumption that new technology will be a panacea.”