The New York Police Department will begin equipping a small number of its officers with wearable video cameras, a pilot program geared toward eventually outfitting the nation’s largest police force with technology that promises greater accountability.

A total of 60 cameras will be deployed in the coming months in five high-crime police precincts, one in each of the city’s five boroughs, Commissioner William J. Bratton said on Thursday.

“It is the next wave,” Mr. Bratton said at Police Headquarters with two officers who wore the small cameras on their uniforms. He likened the introduction of cameras to the rollout, decades before, of hand-held police radios whose crackling codes and blips are now a quintessential part of policing everywhere.

A federal judge last year ordered the department to test the cameras for one year in five precincts as a way of evaluating their effectiveness in curbing unconstitutional stop-and-frisk interactions by officers. The court ordered an independent monitor to help set the policy for the cameras, though that order has been delayed pending an appeal.