New North Bay Police Chief Daryl Longworth wants to take his time on the potential rollout of police body-worn cameras.
"I know there are a number of IT projects on the go right now and I don't want to do too much, too fast where we are not delivering on those primary expectations of emergency response and serving the needs from a public protection view," said Longworth who was officially sworn-in as North Bay's 11th Police Chief in late March.
"I am not opposed to body-worn cameras, they are a fantastic transparency tool for the public."
However, Longworth is concerned about the project along with the requirement on the back end for staffing.
"If the community is willing to pay for that certainly we will follow through on that," noted Longworth.
"It is just a matter of timing and I think that was one of Chief Tod's frustrations was the timing, he wasn't able to deliver it. I do know a lot of larger organizations who have put the brakes on their plans as some larger organizations are saying they just do not have enough staff to deliver on these pieces."
See related: Retired Chief disappointed about body-worn camera rollout
Scott Tod, the former Chief, told BayToday he is optimistic he will see the North Bay Police Service roll out its police body-worn camera project.
Tod wished it happened under his watch.
"I'll be glad to see it rolled out. I have to admit it's a large disappointment that we haven't rolled it out in the last three years that we've been working on it," said Tod, who officially retired as North Bay's chief of police in late February.
"But it's not because of the lack of effort on anyone here. It's because of what I think are the external factors around the collection of digital evidence."
Longworth adds that the demand to get the information gathered and delivered to the courts also brings additional challenges.
The new Chief just wants to make sure a huge project of this magnitude is done properly.
"I have always said you want to crawl before you walk, walk before you run and we want to make sure everything is done properly before we pull the trigger on something that may not work well right off the hop and if we cannot make sure it is done well so we should not be doing it until we know it is going to work well," he said.
