RCMP officers in Treherne will be among the first in our province to start using body-worn cameras, beginning December 4th.
Manitoba RCMP announced that between November 22, 2024, and April 2025, more than 490 officers in 44 Manitoba detachments will be equipped with the cameras. This will include detachments that provide policing services to Ebb and Flow First Nation, Peguis First Nation, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, Chemawawin Cree Nation, O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation as well as a number of other First Nation communities.
The first detachments to receive the cameras will be Steinbach (November 22, 2024), Portage (December 4, 2024), Amaranth (December 4, 2024), Treherne (December 4, 2024), East St. Paul (January 7, 2025), Grand Marais (January 7, 2025), Selkirk (January 7, 2025) and St. Pierre (January 22, 2025).
All other detachments throughout Manitoba will have body-worn cameras and the digital evidence management system rolled out to them in a phased approach over the course of the next 18 months. Nearly 700 cameras are expected to be used by Manitoba RCMP officers.
According to RCMP, body-worn cameras can help increase trust between police and the communities they serve because the video evidence collected will provide an independent, unbiased, and objective way to capture interactions between the community and police officers. It will also help resolve public complaints more quickly and improve evidence gathering.
"It comes down to being more transparent and accountable to the public," says Sergeant Paul Manaigre.
His hope is that these cameras will reduce the number of public complaints, noting they receive a lot, but many of them are deemed frivolous.
"If there's the expectation now by both parties that this matter is being recorded, you are going to see some differences in what people might allege has occurred in terms of their dealing with police," Sergeant Manaigre points out. "But on the other side too, it's for the public, it's keeping officers accountable and accurate as far as what transpired."
He says the cameras will also save time for officers, as taking statements can now be recorded directly into a camera. RCMP officers will usually be wearing their cameras on their chest and the public will know it's recording when a red light is visible and flashing below the lens of the camera.
According to Sergeant Manaigre, the camera will start recording once the officer hits record. However, at that point, the recording will include the previous 30 seconds of whatever the camera picked up. This program is not optional, and he says RCMP policy states that when an officer responds to a complaint from the public, the body-worn camera must be activated. Failing to abide, can result in a breach of RCMP policy.
"Basically, any time an officer has an interaction with the public, with relation to a file, that camera will be turned on," explains Sergeant Manaigre. "As you arrive on scene, the policy states turn your camera on and then once you've kind of deemed I'm done with this investigation or I'm done speaking with someone, then at that point you turn it off."
He says the battery life of the cameras is between 12 and 14 hours. Once a member's shift is over, they will return the camera to the docking station to charge, which downloads the data, making it accessible to RCMP headquarters in Winnipeg. Sergeant Manaigre says at headquarters they have a unit of seven public servants whose job is to deal with the cameras. He notes the videos cannot be edited or manipulated and officers do not have the ability to delete them.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Manaigre says officers will undergo about eight hours of training, noting the process is really quite simple.