Committee rejects call for city to pay for police body cams

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This article was published 16/06/2021 (1036 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A proposal to outfit body cameras on Winnipeg Police Service officers has hit a major obstacle after council’s most powerful committee rejected a call for additional funding.

On Wednesday night, the executive policy committee voted 6-1 against having council provide $32 million over six years for the project. The Winnipeg Police Board asked for that funding to be considered in council’s 2022 budget process — a request still subject to a full council vote.

Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth has championed it as a way to increase the transparency of officer interactions with the public and gather better evidence.

Mayor Brian Bowman stressed Wednesday he would prefer the service achieve that goal within its existing resources.

“If the police service and the police board say it’s a strategic priority, I want to support that. (But) I want to support it within the existing record-high budget that’s been given to the Winnipeg Police Service,” Bowman said during the EPC meeting.

The city’s 2021 operating budget included $301 million for the police department, which Bowman said should allow sufficient resources to fund the camera initiative.

The mayor and others also questioned any decision to provide more money for policing right now, as some advocates lobby city hall to redirect millions of dollars from policing to recreation and other community services.

“I have not heard… advocacy for massive increases to the police budget,” said Bowman.

Coun. Brian Mayes (St. Vital), a member of the Winnipeg Police Board, cast the sole vote in favour of the proposal. The plan was the board’s unanimous decision, which followed extensive research, Mayes said.

“The police board has taken seriously both sides of this debate,” he said.

Coun. Markus Chambers, the board’s chairman, said he will consult his colleagues to see if a final council vote can still salvage the proposal.

Chambers (St. Norbert-Seine River) said he expects capturing video footage of police interactions would improve transparency.

“It will provide full context of the interactions between the police and the community and also lead to opportunities for increased training, where (officers) see these videos and see how they could have done things differently… (in sometimes) very traumatic situations,” he said.

Police are correct to insist they can’t afford the change within the department’s existing budget, Chambers said, noting the service was already mandated by council to find $6.1 million of savings during 2021.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga