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Cabinet has approved the procurement of more than 1,000 body worn cameras for the Jamaica Constabulary Force JCF.
Prime Minister, Dr. Andrew Holness, made the disclosure in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Dr. Holness noted that this procurement is the first in a series, with additional body worn cameras to follow.
“Just to be clear to the public, there sometimes seems to be the view that you can go into a store [purchase] a camera and [attach it to] a police [officer’s] chest. These matters [in reality]… require an ecosystem to work. So it’s not just [about] cameras [but also] storage and archival [systems] for retrieval [which must] be up to a certain standard so that what is stored reaches evidentiary levels,” he explained.
“There has to be a system of how these cameras are maintained, should there be failure. Then there is the whole business of putting in place the fibre-optic connections, because where you download the footage is not where you’re going to store it. So it has to be transmitted, and you have to make sure that you have that connection. So, there’s a lot to be built out before you can deploy body-worn cameras,” the Prime Minister added.
He assured that the buildout is under way and that the JCF will be equipped with sufficient body worn cameras to ensure transparency and accountability in police citizen interactions.
