North Bay Police Chief Daryl Longworth continues to insist the service has put its police body-worn camera project on hold despite recent news that the RCMP has started deploying body-worn cameras along with the Greater Sudbury Police.
Longworth is reluctant to hit the start button on a project he believes the service is not prepared to manage.
"We don't have the human resource staffing right now," stated Longworth after the November Police Board Meeting on Tuesday, November 19.
Longworth believes without the right amount of staff members to commit to the project, they will not be able to turn over video and documents to the courts within the tight deadlines the justice system has imposed.
"If we don't get court documentation to the courts within that 14-day or 21-day period, cases are being thrown out of court, we haven't seen it here yet," explained Longworth.
"We've had to scramble to make sure things got saved when the Crown notified us that this date was coming, but there are jurisdictions where serious violent offences, and even up to the point of homicides, have been thrown out because police services have not met that threshold.
"I do not want to be in a position where we're losing cases because of the sheer volume of that digital evidence that comes in through the seizure of cell phones, computers, the video surveillance, all that has to be redacted, and as of right now, it's all done by human people doing the job."
See related: Body cameras to capture most interactions with Greater Sudbury
In Sudbury, the cameras were recently procured as part of the first phase of a broader rollout at the end of which all 170 frontline officers will wear the devices throughout their shifts.
The first phase will kick off in January, when 30 members in GSPS’s emergency response and traffic enforcement units will begin wearing the chest-mounted cameras, following training next month.
The camera being used is the Axon Body 4, the Arizona-headquartered company's latest version.
