Colorado Springs Police Officers Will Wear Body Cameras Starting in October

By Andrea Sinclair, The Gazette

30 August 14

olorado Springs police officers will soon be outfitted with body-worn cameras as part of a five-month pilot program, a change many police departments throughout Colorado have already adopted.

Beginning Oct. 1, officers from all of the department's subdivisions will rotate use of five cameras every day for about 20 hours per day, said police Lt. Catherine Buckley.

Colorado Springs police are capitalizing on the results of a 12-month study by the University of Cambridge in England and Taser International that showed officer-worn cameras reduced the rate of use-of-force incidents by 59 percent and complaints involving police officers by 87.5 percent.

The study, conducted with the Rialto Police Department in California, began in February 2012 and argued that the rate of use-of-force incidents was 2.5 times higher before police officers were outfitted with the cameras.

The technology is not new to police departments in Colorado - Denver implemented body-worn cameras in June and Fort Collins and Lone Tree already use them - and Buckley said CSPD has considered the program for some time. The $3,000, needed for the program were obtained from the Colorado Springs Police Foundation last year, Buckley said.

Three different types of cameras will be used for the pilot: Taser's Axon Body and Axon Flex, Wolfcom's 3rd Eye and Vision and Digital Ally's First VU HD. The cameras were selected through a comparative quality analysis that included video resolution, field of view, night mode, video safeguards, pre-event recording, event marking, battery type, recording time, weight, environment testing and wireless capabilities, Buckley said.

The fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9 raised public demand for more police officers to be equipped with body-worn cameras. Supporters argue the feature will add accountability to police performance.

Denise Maes, public policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Denver, championed the use of body-worn cameras by police, but said the technology does not come without privacy and accountability concerns.

"Transparency and accountability are both great reasons for police to use body cameras, but we'll want to know which guidelines and procedures will be put into action to make sure the technology isn't misused and people's rights to privacy are protected," Maes told The Gazette on Wednesday.

It remains unclear how much discretion each officer would have to turn the cameras on and off, whether they would have the ability to edit the footage, where it would be stored and for how long, and whether the privacy of the people in the videos would be safeguarded, especially if the interaction with police did not lead to an arrest, Maes said.

"Obviously, there are many considerations when it comes to these cameras to include storage capacity, downloading, and evidentiary considerations, just to name a few," Buckley said. "We are looking at how we can provide the highest level of police services to the citizens of Colorado Springs in a fiscally responsible manner."

El Paso County Sheriff's Office deputies do not use body-worn cameras and no plans are in consideration to implement the technology, said spokesman Sgt. Greg White.