1,400 Chicago Police Officers To Be Outfitted With Body Cameras Next Year
(CBS) -- Researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago will be studying whether or not a new Chicago Police Department body camera program improves interactions between citizens and police.
Deputy Chief Jonathan Lewin says 1,400 police officers will wear the new body cameras for 18 months starting early next year.
He says the new cameras will be much better than the ones now in use by officers in the 14th (Shakespeare) District.
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"The camera's going to be higher resolution…better low-light performance," Lewin says. "It will have additional communications capabilities integrated into the camera, such as Wi-Fi, which gives us additional connection options to be able to upload video and communicate with the camera. It has extended battery life."
Since the beginning of this year, 30 officers in the 3rd watch (afternoon shift) in the 14th District have been wearing body cameras. Chief Lewin says that, so far, there have not been any citizen complaints of excessive force by those officers. In 2014, he says officers not wearing body cameras on that 3rd shift have five citizen complaints against them.
Chief Lewin says studies of other police departments' use of body cams suggest they improve the behavior of, not only the officers, but of the citizens they're dealing with.
The new, higher-tech body cameras will cost roughly $65 a month each to lease, he says, and that includes maintenance and unlimited video storage in the cloud.
Deputy Chief Jonathan Lewin says every officer in six districts will wear the new body cameras and that researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago will evaluate, 18 months later, how those districts stack up against six similar districts in which officers were not wearing cameras.
"They'll be looking at differences in the experiment versus the control district for things like use of force complaints, officer use of force in general, citizen perception. That's going to be a component of it", he says.
