The North Bay Police Chief believes the service is one step closer to getting body worn cameras implemented.
"We are getting close to releasing our body worn camera project to our board," said Scott Tod, North Bay's Police Chief.
"Hopefully in October the presentation in October will show the live features of the cameras so I am hoping very shortly we can release the body worn project to the public as to what it looks like and after that have a plan in place.
"Once all our policies, governance and procedures are adopted by the Police Services Board that we can put it into effect."
Tod believes the project will not be implemented in North Bay until 2023 as the initial target timelines had the system scheduled to be rolled out in this year.
Tod says a lot goes into a large project like this.
"The adoption of the technology really means we really have had to re-engineer how we collect information as a police service as we move from a paper environment to a truly digital environment of everything we do and to be able to provide digital evidence not only to the courts but through freedom of information and other requests for information and being able to provide that without exposing the privacy interests of other individuals involved," said Tod.
Tod adds that there is a lot to legislation behind body-worn video.
"There is a lot to the policies, practices and procedures and more importance the governance from the board in behind body worn video and in-car cameras so it has been a large, complex project although the delay in regards to our release has been a benefit to our side in being able to be able to take advantage of economies of scale - joining other police services and also waiting for many of the features to be worked out by their police services so we could have a smoother transition to body worn video," said Tod.
See related: Police Chief eager to get body-worn camera project in place
See related: Police body-worn camera project getting community support
See related: Police body-worn camera project delayed into 2022
Tod says one of the challenges to work out is when officers activate or don't activate the body worn cameras.
"How do we edit? How do we collect the information? How do we provide it to who are requesting access to the information so a lot of the kinks have been worked out," said Tod.
Tod believes the delays have some positives as it allows them to see the transitions of the body worn cameras being implemented in other Ontario communities. Tod hopes that will help them make a smooth transition.
