Policy

Resources about Policy

In View Commentary: From the Field – Las Vegas Metropolitan, NV Police Department

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) was established in 1973 and is a joint city-county police force for the City of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada. With a sworn police force of over 3,000 officers, LVMPD serves over 2.2 million people. In FY 2015, LVMPD received a Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program award of $250,000 to purchase over 250 cameras. As one of the first agencies to implement BWCs, LVMPD has become an innovative leader in many aspects of BWC implementation, including policy development, research and evaluation, and BWC technology management.

BWCs in the Medical Field: How Can BWC Programs Work Within HIPAA?

On November 19th at 12:00 PM ET, the BWC TTA provider hosted a webinar on body-worn cameras (BWC) in the medical field and discussed how these programs can work within HIPAA. The webinar provided insights and experiences regarding how body-worn camera programs have or have not impacted police agencies as they relate to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Since the introduction of HIPAA, many police officers have not received training on the act or operate under misinformed assumptions on how HIPAA relates to obtaining information in a medical setting.

In View: Digital Evidence Integration

Digital evidence integration has become an emerging topic of discussion as law enforcement agencies around the country increasingly deploy body-worn cameras (BWC). Linking data repositories of videos with the relevant case files in order for them to be usable for investigations and prosecutions has become a challenge for many agencies and their justice stakeholders. In direct response to this emerging trend and need, the BWC Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) program has developed various resources that address this topic.

Body-Worn Cameras as a Potential Source of Depolicing

Contentious debate is currently taking place regarding the extent to which public scrutiny of the police post-Ferguson has led to depolicing or to a decrease in proactive policework. Advocates of the “Ferguson effect” claim the decline in proactive policing increased violent crime and assaults on the police. Although police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are touted as a police reform that can generate numerous benefits, they also represent a form of internal and public surveillance on the police.

Fairfax County Police Department's Body-Worn Camera Pilot Project: An Evaluation

In 2017, the Fairfax County (Virginia) Police Department, known as FCPD, decided to launch a pilot implementation of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to learn what the technology involved, the response of its officers to it, what community members and local organization leaders would think, and the changes in policing practices and outcomes that would occur. Some police agencies in the Metropolitan Washington, DC area had already adopted BWCs and there was a push nation-wide to implement them quickly in the face of numerous high-profile and controversial interactions between police and citizens.