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Chico Police Show Proposed Body Cameras, Get Public Feedback

Following law enforcement controversies elsewhere, the Chico police department is planning to distribute body cameras to its officers later this year. Wednesday evening, the public had its first look at the equipment under consideration, and the proposed policy governing their use.

The idea behind body cameras is to reduce some of the biggest problems faced by law enforcement: the widely different interpretations of events during potentially heated incidents officers face daily. Cameras, it is said, are impartial. Footage can help answer questions in cases involving alleged excessive force and give a clearer view of a tense situation.

During a meeting of Chico’s Police Community Advisory Board, Captain Mike O’Brien showed off two possible candidates — traditional chest-mounted cameras in use by many departments, as well as eyeglass-mounted cameras. Both have pros and cons.

The 17 residents in attendance were also given a look and encouraged to comment on an interim policy about how the cameras would be used.

Several locals had reservations, especially in regards to language that doesn’t require a camera to be rolling in every circumstance. Anthony Lewis is a board member of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“There’s too much leeway for the officers in my opinion.”

Others, including Irma Jordan, president of the Oroville chapter of the NAACP, were concerned that the four page rules don’t include defined disciplinary sanctions for violating the policy.

O’Brien said the department will fine tune and issue a final policy over the next three or four months.

“We know that they’ll be things that we will learn, and things that probably you will pass on to us that we will want to include in our final policy.”

Copies of the document are available on request from the department. It may soon be uploaded to the department’s face book page.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Anthony Lewis as an attorney. He is not. 

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