NYPD Officers to Begin Body Camera Training
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r_drewek/iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Training will begin on Wednesday for New York Police Department officers to wear body cameras.
The decision to implement body cameras comes in the wake of both the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and more locally, allegations that an NYPD officer fatally placed an unarmed man, Eric Garner, in a choke hold this past summer. Choke holds are banned by NYPD policy.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 27 officers in three precincts will begin wearing the cameras this weekend, including in the Staten Island area where the incident involving Garner occurred.
He also noted that the cameras “are one of the ways to create a real sense of transparency and accountability, and one of the ways that we can bring police and community closer together.”
New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said on Tuesday that “in the midst of so much of the controversy, so much of the rhetoric and so much of the issues that we’re dealing with, we lose sight of [that] the department has been moving forward in many ways, retraining, technology.”
A grand jury could vote on possible charges for the officers involved in Garner’s death as soon as Wednesday.
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