Body-worn cameras for municipal police officers: it’s all over!

The body-worn camera scheme, which is intended to improve relations between the police and the public and is already in use by the national police and the gendarmerie, has been undergoing a trial within the municipal police since 3 June 2016. A report to be submitted to Parliament in the coming days More than 300 local authorities had been granted authorisation to carry out this trial and “have drawn very positive conclusions from it”, according to the Ministry of the Interior, which states that this scheme is “fully in line with the approach initiated with the launch of the everyday security police (PSQ)”. The government will submit a report to Parliament “in the very next few days” to assess the results of this trial ahead of the examination, starting on 13 June, of a draft bill aimed at standardising the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement agencies, the press release states. “It will be up to the legislature, based in particular on the report to be submitted to it, to assess whether this trial should be continued or discontinued,” the ministry states. On Wednesday, the LR mayor of Saint-Étienne, Gaël Perdriau, had already announced that he would not be removing the body-worn cameras used by his municipal police force, despite the end of the statutory trial period. “All the towns using this system are very satisfied with it (...) and, as far as I am aware, there have been no incidents linked to body-worn cameras to date,” added the Saint-Étienne councillor.