Police minister Senzo Mchunu revealed recently that the South African Police Service will this year begin piloting a body-worn camera programme, but South Africa is not the first jurisdiction to dabble with the technology.
Many police departments in the US, France, Morocco and various parts of the Middle East have implemented the technology with success, with an overall improvement in the quality of policing touted as bodycam technology’s most valued benefit.
A 2017 study by the Las Vegas metropolitan police department found that police officers who wore bodycams generated significantly fewer complaints about excessive use of force compared to their non-camera-wearing counterparts. Bodycam-wearing officers also made more arrests.
Las Vegas also realised savings from having fewer complaints to deal with and being able to resolve complaints they did receive faster because of the availability of video evidence.
According to Rudie Opperman, manager for operations and training at security camera specialist Axis, the company has deployed bodycam solutions to police departments and private security companies in several countries. He said the technology helps keep police officers honest and makes policing safer for the officers who wear them.
“Body-worn cameras are a deterrent because, in any hostile or contentious scenario between people, if one person is wearing a camera, it immediately defuses the situation,” Opperman said in an interview with TechCentral. “Other than its use as a deterrent, it also is an evidence recorder that helps avoid any unforeseen lawsuits or false information after the fact.”
Costly
Despite generally positive feedback, police departments that have implemented bodycam technology have learnt hard lessons regarding the total cost of such projects: there are many hidden costs that tend to be overlooked in the planning phase.
Police minister Mchunu estimated the cost of acquiring bodycams at about R29 000 each, with government planning to buy at least 100 of them a year over the next five years at a total cost of R14.4-million. But Opperman warned that acquisition costs only represent a small portion of the true total cost.
Most bodycams use internal memory to store recorded video, which is then uploaded into a video management system at the end of the wearer’s shift. The exception to this is a class of 4G-enabled cams that livestream content directly into a cloud storage facility, but these are generally more expensive than the usual “record and dump” cameras, said Opperman. In either scenario, additional cloud storage costs apply.
Read: SAPS to pilot bodycams starting this year
The docking stations that are used to upload end-of-shift recordings also serve as charging stations for the bodycams, and these also come at an extra cost. There also needs to be a way of ascertaining that a given bodycam was indeed worn by a specific individual for a specific shift.
Opperman said this is done using RFID tags. Each police officer is assigned a unique RFID tag that they use to “marry” themselves to a bodycam unit at the start of a shift – they then “tag out” at the end of the shift. These tags also come at an additional cost.
The cameras need to be attached to the police officer’s uniform either at their chest, shoulder or hip, on their belt, or even on their head, depending on the situation. Opperman said various attachments are available for purchase but these also cost money.
Cloud storage is required for archiving video footage, a cost that will grow over time. Depending on how the footage is to be used, additional processing power may needed to perform additional functions like running facial recognition algorithms on bodycam footage against known criminal databases to identify suspects.
The time and cost of training police officers to use the devices correctly is another important consideration that must be made early on in any bodycam project, said Opperman.
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Another important consideration when it comes to bodycams is data privacy – and the potential of the technology to violate data protection laws such South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia). The European Commission has responded to the threat by publishing a bodycam usage guide for public law enforcement as well as private entities engaged in security – with special reference to Europe’s Popia equivalent, called the General Data Protection Regulation.
“Wearable technologies such as body-worn cameras pose a particular challenge from a data protection perspective due to their mobile nature. Unlike CCTV systems, which can be carefully positioned to minimise the risk of inadvertent data collection, a body-worn camera effectively turns the wearer into a mobile surveillance system that is highly likely to capture the personal data of passers-by,” said the guide. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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