North Bay Police Chief Scott Tod is hoping to have more details completed by the end of this month regarding a project that could see North Bay Police officers wearing body-worn cameras in the near future.
"We are in the midst of working through the digital management evidence portion of what is necessary to commence our pilot project on body-worn video," stated Scott Tod, North Bay's Police Chief during a recent interview.
Tod says the project requires the acquisition of technology, specialized knowledge, and services.
"We are fortunate we have worked with Toronto Police and other police services in Ontario that we were able to quickly take advantage of some of the technology so we are hoping by the end of the first quarter to be able to have our digital management evidence plan presented to the board."
That means a possible presentation at the next Police Board meeting.
"I think that's totally possible that we will be doing that within the April Board Meeting on how we are going to acquire body-worn video, in car-camera video, and how we are going to mesh it with all the other digital evidence we are going to collect as a police service so it is moving ahead," stated Tod.
See related: Police body-worn cameras to be installed by 2021?
The North Bay Police Service confirmed to BayToday in early June of 2020 that Chief Scott Tod was working on a report relating to bringing in body-worn cameras to the service potentially as early as 2021.
The news of the issue came via an internal police memo BayToday received from a source back on June 4.
"He [Police Board Chair Dennis O'Connor] has asked me to prepare a report for the Board on the police use of body-worn cameras and conduct a review of recent reports including the Ontario Human Rights Commission report titled 'Human rights and policing: Creating and sustaining organizational change' and report to the Board a plan of action to improve our service," Chief Scott Tod stated in the June 2020 internal memo.
