PORTLAND, Ore. — After nearly a decade of debate and delays, some Portland police officers will finally begin wearing body cameras starting on Monday.
Until now, Portland had the largest municipal police department in the country without law enforcement body cameras.
About 150 officers with the Portland Police Bureau — from the central precinct and PPB's Focused Intervention Team, a gun violence reduction group — will use Axon technology for a two-month pilot program.
"Our officers have been wanting these for years," said Lt. Nathan Sheppard, PPB spokesman. "It’s huge and long overdue and we are very happy for this finally to be happening."
Per PPB policy, officers are required to turn on their body cameras for every call for service. Beyond that, the cameras automatically turn on in the most crucial moments — when an officer pulls a gun, pulls a taser or turns on vehicle lights.
"The camera activates, it detects a Bluetooth signal, and it also activates every body camera nearby," said officer David Baer, from the PPB Central Precinct Bike Squad.
Baer said he can't wait to use the cameras and knows he'll feel safer with the cameras recording each interaction.
"We have a lot of investigations where video is key - jurors love video and the (District Attorney's office) loves video," Baer said. "To be able to (show) video from five different perspectives of what happened, especially with drug investigations we’re currently running ... we’re really excited to have these."
PPB said officers can’t delete, edit or alter recorded video. The system keeps track of who views a video and when they watch it.
"Accountability, obviously, these things are going to be on and they’re going to record everything," Sheppard said. "I think it’s going to make it safer for officers and safer for the public because everybody is going to know there’s going to be an irrefutable account of what happened."
After years of disagreements and stalemates, the city and police union finally compromised on a body camera agreement in April.
Under that agreement, officers will be allowed to review video footage before writing a report for minor cases, but not for the bigger events like use of force incidents, shootings, and injuries.
In those cases, officers must give an interview or statement first before watching the video back.
The Axon cameras also come with a 30-second "buffer," recording 30 seconds of video before any camera is switched on, in order to capture the moments leading up to major incidents.
Once the pilot wraps up in mid-October, the city of Portland would need to sign a contract to equip the entire PPB force with body cameras.