In quiescent Culver City, where major crime is a rare visitor, where cops don’t shoot suspects and where suspects don’t try to murder cops, body-cams for the Police Dept. remain on Chief Scott Bixby’s to-do list.
Since this is not Ferguson or Chicago, body-cams are seen more as a desirable tool rather than an urgent need.
Late summer is the target date for the mail delivery of body-cams.
Chief Bixby said he will order/request them in his budget proposal that will go to the City Council in the spring. He said that dash-cams, which the department uses, have been a successful addition.
On body-cams, certain unspecified privacy issues remain to be resolved.
And there is the matter of pushback from some veteran officers. Why, they wonder, is it necessary to record actions – usually routine – that they have performed spotlessly for years?
Younger officers seem to understand/accept two concepts:
- In the last 16 months, since Ferguson, body-cams have become a nationally embraced tool of law enforcement agencies. If there is pushback, it has been muffled.
- Chief Bixby and his counterparts believe that body-cams will reduce complaints against officers when suspects/offended citizens realize they are being taped as well as the cop.
