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Axon declined to say how many Canadian police forces use its equipment, citing a policy of not commenting on contracts, but a company spokesperson said more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies around the world use the company’s products.

“Moving the conversation to things like evidence collection is a more benign way of talking about body-worn cameras. You get away from killing, you get away from police misconduct and brutality . . . whereas evidence collection is a more neutral way of talking about body-worn cameras,” he said.

The department’s request includes $4.2-million to equip its 326 front-line officers with body cameras and manage the massive amount of data the devices capture.

The warning by sociologist Christopher Schneider comes as city council prepares to begin debating the overall London budget next month, which includes a London police budget request that would grow to $672 million over four years.

London politicians should think twice before they sign off on body cameras for city police officers, says a leading critic of the technology.

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“The public is likely to be more favourable in relation to accepting body-worn cameras because it allows police officers to do their job more efficiently. And when we’re talking about a tax-funded organization like police, we want efficiency, right?”

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Despite dozens of Canadian police forces embracing body cameras in the past decade, including police in St. Thomas and Strathroy-Caradoc, the public rarely sees the footage captured by the cameras, unlike in the United States where police often release it after high-profile events.

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But Schneider, who’s working on a new book about the technology and has written peer-reviewed academic articles about body cameras, takes issue with that.

“Police, because of privacy restrictions and legislation in the Canadian context, are less transparent with body-worn cameras than their American counterparts,” Schneider said.

All of the technology will be supplied by Axon, an Arizona-based company that develops weapons and technology for law enforcement.

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London police Chief Thai Truong has said body cameras are an essential part of his plan to modernize the force and change the way service is delivered.

Police often champion body cameras as a tool to enhance public transparency and accountability, a claim backed up by a 2015 study of police in Rialto, Calif., that found the use of the wearable technology reduced use-of-force incidents and complaints against police.

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Body camera footage is typically only released through freedom-of-information (FOI) requests by people asking to view footage of their interactions with police, or in court cases when the footage is presented as evidence.

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London politicians should think twice before they sign off on body cameras for city police officers, says a leading critic of the technology.

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Schneider said he suspects police leaders have shifted the debate about body cameras from accountability and transparency to efficiency in response to public disappointment over the lack of body camera footage made public.

“Right now there’s so much red tape for Joe Public to have to go through to access their own footage, and that’s problematic for a lot of reasons,” Schneider said, noting the FOI process can be complex and time-consuming.

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“What they mean is up for debate, essentially,” said the sociology professor at Brandon University in Manitoba. “When police say transparency and accountability, politicians say it, when activists groups say it, they all sort of mean different things.”

“There have been numerous replication studies that have followed and some of these have found no statistical significance between officers wearing cameras and without cameras,” Schneider said, noting transparency and accountability are difficult to measure through research.

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The cameras – along with a digital evidence management system, patrol car cameras and other supporting technologies – will streamline policing duties, allowing officers to spend more time on policing and community engagement, Truong has said.

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