Public Safety recently announced that all officers will start wearing body cameras starting in 2023. These cameras will record all officer encounters when addressing incidents.

Public Safety Chief Rick Gonzalez demonstrated the cameras at an event earlier this month. He explained that the cameras will increase transparency and accountability for their officers.

“When you have video of an incident, you can release it quickly and it shows that you aren’t hiding anything,” Gonzalez said at the event.

The cameras record audio and video and provide a GPS location. Gonzalez described that the videos from the cameras will be released when warranted, not all the videos will be made public.

“Only videos with useful information to the public will be released, for example, if we were attempting to identify an individual,” Public Safety officer Sean Porter replied to a question from The Panther at the event. 

The cameras are currently in the testing and evaluation phase and are planned to go into full implementation by January 2023. 

“Our goal is to release any video we think the public would want to see as quickly as possible,” Gonzalez said.

Officers are required to inform the people they encounter when on a call that the cameras are recording. Cameras can be turned off by request in spaces with an expectation of privacy, such as a dorm room or a classroom.

“Any time you are outdoors or in the lobby of a building, there isn’t an expectation of privacy,” Dean of Students Jerry Price said at the event. “Residence hall rooms would be an exception, but hallways are also considered public areas.” 

In a survey conducted by The Panther with 81 participants, 77% responded that they think the cameras will be helpful for student encounters with Public Safety officers.

Gonzalez said that they implemented the cameras to follow the lead of other local private and public universities — including The University of California, Irvine and California State University, Fullerton — and to follow best local practices. The videos may also be helpful if an arrest is made, since the evidence could be used in court or to help clear up conflicting claims by students and officers.

“Sometimes, we get reports of disagreements between officers and students,” Price said. “The officer will be responding to something and there will be a discrepancy between who was the aggressor, so having this kind of footage is an objective look at the situation, which will be helpful to us when looking to see what happened.”