On Monday, the LAPD Will Start Wearing Body Cameras

The Los Angeles Times reports that on Monday, Los Angeles Police Department officers stationed in areas of the San Fernando Valley will be equipped with body cameras. Over the rest of September, 860 cameras will be distributed to LAPD officers, with plans for a total of around 7,000 body cameras to be given to officers in the coming months.

In March of this year, the ACLU issued a report stating, in part, "The challenge of on-officer cameras is the tension between their potential to invade privacy and their strong benefit in promoting police accountability." The ACLU suggested that:

The LAPD announced in April that while they planned on implementing body cameras on officers, footage captured by them would not be released to the public, and that officers would be able to access that footage before speaking with internal investigators. A rep from the ACLU told the Times that the proposed policy "[fell] short on most of the issues that we thought a body camera policy had to address." Following the LAPD's announcements of their specific body camera policies, the ACLU withdrew their support for the program.

Though LAPD commissioner Robert Saltzman told the Times today that he had reservations about the policy, he was generally in support of equipping officers with body cameras. He told the paper, "This is a big deal."

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