Lawyers and MPs say officers given too much discretion about when to use the cameras • Sign up to receive the top stories every morning

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The rollout of body cameras by the Victorian state police is an example of “pretend accountability” because officers maintain discretion over when to use the devices and sanctions for misuse are not clear, critics claim.

On Wednesday the police in Melbourne’s north became the first in the state to be equipped with the cameras, part of statewide rollout expected to be complete by 2020.

The Victorian government and police force said the cameras will function as an accountability tool, and help to “de-escalate violence in interactions between the police and criminals”.

Officers will not be able to delete or alter the footage and it will be kept for a minimum of 90 days.

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“Police will be turning the cameras on whenever they are exercising police powers, collecting evidence or when it would provide transparency to a police interaction,” the Victorian police commander, Russell Barrett, said on Wednesday.

But lawyers and MPs remain critical of the policy because, they say, officers both in Victoria and in other jurisdictions have been given too much discretion about when to use the cameras.

“From an accountability perspective it’s only effective if there are very clear stipulations about when the camera is turned on and off, and repercussions for officers if it’s misused,” said Anthony Kelly, the executive officer of the Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre’s police accountability project.

“From our perspective there remains a lot of discretion around use, and that’s still a concern.”

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The Victorian police minister, Lisa Neville, said officers in Victoria “will turn the cameras on whenever they are exercising police powers, collecting evidence or when it would provide transparency to a police interaction”.

At a press conference on Wednesday she said that in instances where the cameras are not turned on police “will have to indicate why they haven’t activated”.

Barrett said that decisions about whether officers could face punishment for not turning on the cameras would be made “on a case-by-case basis”.

But neither Neville or Barrett outlined what kind of sanctions would be applied to officers. So far the only legislative change made by the Victorian government was when it used surveillance laws to allow officers to use the devices.

It’s the moments when police don’t want to be recorded that are often the most important NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge

In other jurisdictions where officers have been given broad discretion over use of the cameras, critics of the policy say it has stunted their effectiveness.

In New South Wales, the state government has been rolling out the cameras since 2014. Guidelines for their use state that officers can “activate the record function of the camera at their discretion”.

“Generally this will be incident-specific or to capture something of relevance,” the guidelines state.



David Shoebridge, a Greens upper house MP from NSW, said the usefulness of body cameras has been limited because of that discretion. He said Victoria and NSW should follow the example of states in the US, where officers are required to have the cameras on whenever they are in public.

“It’s the moments when police don’t want to be recorded that are often the most important,” he said.

“We know that the ability of police to turn off these cameras at will substantially reduce their effectiveness in protecting the public and improving accountability.

“There is an expectation officers will have cameras on when exercising a police power or using force, but there is no legal requirement that they do so, and no sanction for any breach.”