Long Beach police officers patrolling the city’s western and central neighborhoods will begin wearing body cameras around March, following the City Council’s approval of a year-long program to test the technology.

All eight council members present for Tuesday’s meeting voted in favor of the pilot program. The city’s contract, for a maximum of $210,000, is with a subsidiary of Round Rock, Texas’ Dell, Inc. and its subcontractor, the Decatur, Georgia firm of Utility Associates, Inc.

Multiple police departments have adopted body-worn cameras in light of controversies in recent years over officer-involved shootings and uses of force. Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said Tuesday that assigning cameras to patrol officers and their supervisors is one way to improve community trust while underscoring the legitimacy of law enforcement.

Implementation

Luna said research of other agencies’ use of cameras suggests it is likely that employing body-worn cameras will reduce officers’ injuries as well as uses of force and citizen complaints alleging police misconduct.

Police leaders plan to randomly distribute the cameras to officers working in the department’s western patrol division, which includes neighborhoods west of the 710 Freeway, downtown, the area around Long Beach Poly and streets as far east as Cherry Avenue.

“Historically, that is one of the busiest parts of town where (use-of-force instances, complaints and injuries) are typically higher,” Luna said.

There is little evidence beyond anecdotes to support the use of body-worn cameras, Long Beach Police Cmdr. Paul LeBaron said by telephone Wednesday, but he also pointed to a study that showed positive results for officers in Rialto, near San Bernardino.

The study, published in 2014 and involving the work of University of Cambridge researchers, found that when officers wore cameras and told those whom they contacted that encounters would be recorded, the technology had power to deter all parties from escalating situations.

Researchers observed that use-of-force incidents involving Rialto officers wearing cameras fell 59 percent during a yearlong experiment. Complaints against officers assigned to wear cameras also fell by 87 percent, year-over-year.

Although the debate on body cameras is often colored by the question of whether the technology is needed to prevent improper uses of force, LeBaron said cameras will also be a tool to record the good Long Beach officers do as they go about their jobs.

On the subject of whether police video footage may be circumstances in which the police department may release camera footage, Luna said Tuesday the California Public Records Act would be used to determine when footage can be released. He said the department would not provide video showing events pertaining to criminal or administrative investigations. Otherwise, footage may be releasable in accord with the public records disclosure laws and advice from the City Attorney’s office.

The cameras

Bob McKeeman, CEO of Utility Associates, described the cameras as the second-generation in body worn technology in a phone interview with the Press-Telegram Tuesday afternoon.

The cameras are integrated with wireless 4G/LTE connections to the patrol vehicle’s lights and sirens, McKeeman said. Each police department is free to configure the cameras to its particular needs. For instance, the cameras can be set up to record when the officer steps out of the patrol vehicle if the lights and sirens are activated.

“We don’t want to ask a police officer to do something that can be done automatically,” he said.

These automated systems help make the cameras less of a distraction for officers and ensures footage won’t be missed because an officer forgets to turn on the camera, McKeeman said. The cameras can also be configured to keep recording until the officer sits back down in the patrol car and turns off the lights when the incident is over.

“Each police department designs the policy,” he said.

The camera is embedded into the officer’s uniform or onto his or her body armor vest, McKeeman said. Each unit also comes with GPS, integration into the local dispatch center’s computer system and other features he said makes the system adaptable to department needs.

Software included with the cameras also allows for simple redaction of bystanders’ faces, victims, undercover police officers and other people whose faces and other identifying information should not be left in videos.

The BodyWorn model of camera is used by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.

A prior version of this article misstated that the Metropolitan Transit Authority Police Department, New York uses the BodyWorn camera, but the agency only uses the company’s wireless routers.

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