The North Bay Police continue to put body-worn camera project on hold.
Police Chief Daryl Longworth emphasized that a civilian staffing shortage makes bringing in this new technology too much of a challenge.
"When I talk about the vacancies we have on the civilian side, that's one of the significant hurdles we have to overcome with the body worn camera program," said Longworth.
North Bay's top cop believes the North Bay Police Service is not alone.
"In fact there some other police services that have jumped into that body worn camera world without having the proper back end, and I think they're starting to run in problems with meeting disclosure deadlines," explained Longworth.
"We don't want this to fail, so when we do it, we want to be properly staffed and properly able to roll it out before we engage that a lot of the back end technical stuff is has been worked on in the in the background, and it's ready to go. We just need that staffing level up to the point where we can roll it out and know it's going to be successful."
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Longworth, who took over the position from Scott Tod in March of 2024, took a different direction with a project that the former chief said he regretted not having in place before retirement in late February.
Longworth adds that the demand to get the information gathered and delivered to the courts also brings additional challenges.
"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.
Earlier this week, Greater Sudbury Police Service staff announced they plan to begin rolling out body-worn cameras as part of a pilot project in 2025.
Last week the North Bay Police Service announced it is currently working to fill 30 positions, comprised of 16 full-time civilian positions, 10 part-time civilian positions, and four sworn officer positions.
