Thousands of law enforcement agencies have expanded their use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to officers in specialty assignments, but some agencies have been reluctant to equip their K-9 handlers with BWCs. Our training and technical assistance team interviewed the following four subject matter experts to get their perspectives on the issue:

• Lt. Ari Morin, Fairfax County (VA) Police Department
• Major Mark Flynn, Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
• Sgt. Mike Murphy, El Cajon (CA) Police Department
• Mike McGuinness, City Attorney, Escondido (CA)

In this infographic and accompanying text, we go over the points they discussed.

The BWC TTA team has just released a new resource: BWC Field Testing & Evaluation Form. This resource will help agencies evaluate the performance and suitability of different models of body-worn cameras (BWCs). The Field Testing Form (an Excel workbook) includes multiple tabs for field testers to record ratings of different aspects of BWCs, across different brands. As agencies implementing BWCs may consider many different aspects, the Testing and Evaluation Resource should be adapted to meet your agency's needs. Start with this template and modify as appropriate to streamline the information-gathering process and assist you with the vendor decision.

Download the Field Testing & Evaluation Form here.

This in-view commentary highlights the benefits and considerations of using BWC footage in After-Action Reports (AARs) and provides recommendations for incorporating them in organizational reviews of future significant events. We provide examples of how BWCs were used in AARs from the 2020 protests to support our recommendations.

Read the In-View here.

This webinar focused on academic studies examining how agencies are using BWC metadata. Speakers described their own experiences with how they connect and use that metadata generated from BWCs. Dr. Mike White of Arizona State University (and BWC TTA co-director) facilitated a discussion among a panel of speakers that included Dr. Kayla Freemon (DePaul University), Dr. John McCluskey (Rochester Institute of Technology), Adrian Martin (Rochester, NY PD), Cpt. Brendan Hooke (Fairfax County, VA PD), and Lt. Mike Lentz (BWC Program Manager; Fairfax County, VA PD).

Discussions included defining BWC metadata, emerging promising practices for BWC metadata, how Rochester, NY PD and Fairfax County, VA PD use their metadata, as well as Dr. Freemon's BWC metadata case study with the Phoenix, AZ PD.

Watch the webinar here.