CoP reveals current body cams only have two hours of battery life

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

As Par­lia­ment pre­pares to de­bate the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill to­day, a dis­pute over the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) body-worn cam­era ca­pac­i­ty has raised fresh ques­tions about the safe­guards that would ac­com­pa­ny the ex­pand­ed po­lice pow­ers pro­posed un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said yes­ter­day that just over 100 body cam­eras were cur­rent­ly op­er­a­tional with­in the TTPS. How­ev­er, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith chal­lenged that claim, dis­put­ing the re­port­ed bat­tery lim­i­ta­tions of the de­vices and ques­tion­ing what had be­come of hun­dreds of cam­eras ac­quired dur­ing his tenure.

Gue­var­ro was speak­ing to re­porters at the open­ing of the Grand Bazaar Po­lice Post, where he re­vealed that the TTPS was in the process of procur­ing ad­di­tion­al body cam­eras. He did not in­di­cate when the new de­vices were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive.

“I’ve al­ways been very trans­par­ent with the fact that we on­ly have one hun­dred and some­thing work­ing body cams at this time. We are cur­rent­ly in the pro­cure­ment process and, as you all know, OPR is very strict,” Gue­var­ro said.

The com­mis­sion­er said the avail­able cam­eras had been de­ployed to front­line of­fi­cers but ac­knowl­edged that their lim­it­ed bat­tery life cre­at­ed op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.

“Bal­anc­ing the stock wouldn’t re­al­ly be an is­sue be­cause they are al­ready de­ployed to front­line polic­ing of­fi­cers. The prob­lem with the stock of body cams is that the bat­tery charge is on­ly about an hour and a half to two hours. So, even if a pa­trol goes out, by the time you reach an hour and a half, the bat­tery goes dead,” he said.

Gue­var­ro al­so ex­pressed con­cern about of­fi­cers man­u­al­ly switch­ing cam­eras on and off dur­ing op­er­a­tions.

“Those par­tic­u­lar body cams, once you put it on, stay on. I will not en­cour­age of­fi­cers to start and stop record­ings be­cause it will lend to a nar­ra­tive of in­tegri­ty is­sues in the record­ing. We were told that they were Ax­on body cam­eras, but they were not, sad­ly,” he said.

Grif­fith, who served as com­mis­sion­er be­tween 2018 and 2021, re­ject­ed Gue­var­ro’s ex­pla­na­tion re­gard­ing bat­tery life, ar­gu­ing that the cam­eras ref­er­enced should func­tion for sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer pe­ri­ods.

“Every­body could type Google. Go on it. You will see five to 15 hours. If it is that there was an in­fe­ri­or mod­el, that is one thing. But there were hun­dreds up­on hun­dreds of Getac and Ax­on body cam­eras. To pin­point and say these body cam­eras are not ef­fec­tive, can be turned on and off, and have a low bat­tery life, I am chal­leng­ing him on it be­cause some­thing is wrong,” Grif­fith said.

The for­mer com­mis­sion­er al­so ques­tioned pro­pos­als to ac­quire as many as 7,000 cam­eras, ar­gu­ing that the num­ber far ex­ceed­ed op­er­a­tional needs.

“You do not need more than 1,000 be­cause you do not have more than one-sev­enth of the po­lice ser­vice on op­er­a­tional ac­tive du­ty at any one time. This at­tempt to pur­chase 7,000 body cam­eras, one for every po­lice of­fi­cer, makes lit­tle sense when two-thirds of of­fi­cers are not on op­er­a­tional du­ty and in­stead per­form lo­gis­tics, ad­min­is­tra­tive, wel­fare, hu­man re­sources or fi­nance func­tions,” he said.

Grif­fith fur­ther crit­i­cised the pace of the cur­rent pro­cure­ment process, not­ing that the TTPS had ac­quired 1,000 body cam­eras with­in two months dur­ing his tenure af­ter fund­ing was ap­proved.

For Grif­fith, how­ev­er, the is­sue goes be­yond the num­ber of cam­eras avail­able. He ar­gued that equal at­ten­tion must be giv­en to how footage is stored, man­aged and pre­sent­ed in court.

“There must be an arm, an en­ti­ty out­side of the po­lice ser­vice. It can’t be the po­lice ex­tract­ing the footage, se­cur­ing it, mon­i­tor­ing it, stor­ing it and then send­ing it to the court. Things can hap­pen. Things can be mis­placed. Things can be cut and past­ed,” he said.

Grif­fith pro­posed that an in­de­pen­dent third-par­ty agency be re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing body-cam­era footage to en­sure trans­paren­cy and pre­serve pub­lic con­fi­dence in the in­tegri­ty of the record­ings.

“There should be an ex­ter­nal agency, out­side of the po­lice ser­vice, do­ing the mon­i­tor­ing, se­cur­ing, sav­ing, ex­tract­ing and for­ward­ing of record­ings to the court if re­quired. That is im­por­tant. It can’t be the po­lice record­ing and then the po­lice se­cur­ing the record­ing,” he said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that some of­fi­cers may be wary of manda­to­ry body-cam­era use, Grif­fith ar­gued that the tech­nol­o­gy should not be viewed sole­ly as a tool for in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­le­ga­tions of po­lice mis­con­duct.

He said body-cam­era footage can al­so pro­tect of­fi­cers by pro­vid­ing an ob­jec­tive record of in­ter­ac­tions and help­ing to re­fute false or un­found­ed com­plaints made against them by mem­bers of the pub­lic.