NYPD To Get Body Cameras One Year Ahead Of Schedule: Mayor

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Almost 20,000 NYPD patrol officers will wearing body cameras by the end of 2018, officials announced on Tuesday.

“Body cameras change lives for the better,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio at a 79th Precinct press conference. “They ensure community members feel the power of transparency.”

The Mayor announced this expansion of the NYPD's program more than four years after the October 2013 court order that blocked stopped-and-frisk and mandated police officers from 20 precincts started testing body cameras.

The NYPD has since been collecting data — from those 20 precincts as well as a control group of 20 precincts that went without — which it will hand over to the Federal Monitor to be analyzed in the following year, officials said.

But before the data could be processed, anecdotal evidence of the body camera's success convinced city and law enforcement officials to expand the body camera program a year earlier than projected.

“The advantages way outweigh any disadvantages,” said NYPD Commissioner James O’ Neill. “We made it a priority.”

The NYPD has released footage from three police-involved shootings since the program began, and officials said it was possible they’d release video from a police-involved shooting in The Bronx Monday night.

The NYPD will start distributing body cameras to three precincts per week in April and more than 18,000 body cameras will be rolled out between April and November.

De Blasio and O’Neill were joined by Bed-Stuy city councilman Robert Cornegy and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams in the press conference on Tuesday. Adams was enthusiastic about how the body camera program could provide immediate training to police officers after conflicts.

“It turns the entire precinct and police population in a training ground, and it’s so important,” said Adams. “Those who are against body cameras just don’t get it.”

Photo by Kathleen Culliton