1,450 Cleveland Cops to Get Body Cams After Tamir Rice Shooting
On Wednesday, police in Cleveland began wearing some of the 1,500 body cameras the city bought for officers last month, the Associated Press reports. Cleveland Police plan to outfit every officer in the department with the devices by June.
According to the newly drafted policy, officers will be required to record during pedestrian or vehicle investigative stops, pursuits and emergency driving situations, crime or accident scenes, physical violence, civil disturbances, criminal suspicious activity or police use-of-force incidents.
The move comes less than three months after the killing of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot to death by police while holding a toy gun in Cleveland park. Police departments in other cities, including New York and Ferguson, MO, have similarly implemented body cameras after alleged police misconduct.
Not everyone, however, is convinced the cameras will effectively prevent police abuses.
"You will have to prove to me that this will mean you will discipline officers who cross the line, because in the past, not even video accomplished that," one Cleveland councilman told the city's police chief. "A tool can be misused by any supervisor. It means you will have to do your jobs with this new equipment."