How Body Cameras Are Helping Train Police Recruits

Police technology has changed a lot since Jim Sears became an officer more than 30 years ago.

Among the big changes is the growing use of body cameras.

That trend recently arrived in such training institutions as the North Central Texas Council of Governments Regional Police Academy, where Sears is an instructor.

More than 80 percent of U.S. police departments have deployed this form of government technology, with most large police agencies using them and smaller departments trying to catch up, according to estimates.

Costs are still significant, but even so, body cameras continue to evolve as some departments push toward the frontier of technology.

The Texas academy serves some of those smaller departments and trains about 250 rookie officers every year; students have already been hired before they attend classes. Bigger cities tend to operate their own academies.

The idea is not only to get those rookies used to body cameras, but to provide a better education via what is called “scenario-based police training.”

Instead of relying on observations from teachers such as Sears, and the memories of recruits, the body cameras offer more accurate after-action reviews of training situations. That can also save time because the cameras can reduce the need for individual debriefings.

“The body camera also shows what they are doing right, not just wrong,” Sears told Government Technology, adding that recruits are also taught to “talk through” things that body cameras might always not pick up, such as someone with a gun.

Footage from the cameras also can show hiring departments what recruits are getting wrong and right, which can inform the training those rookies receive post-academy while on the job.

The academy uses V700 body cameras from Motorola Solutions.

As law enforcement adopts technology that in Sears’ early days was considered futuristic, there would seem to be an increasing need for academy training on these new tools, some of which have attracted controversy and sparked intense political debates.

That’s not exactly easy.

As Sears pointed out, states set basic curricula for police academies, which according to research tend to average more than 800 hours of instruction for each student.

Those hours are already filled with mandated physical fitness sessions and training in such areas as weapons use, police strategy, community relations and the law.

There is relatively little time or freedom to teach recruits about drones or automated license plate readers, much less facial recognition and artificial intelligence.

Much of that work is left to the hiring agencies after recruits graduate and continue their training on the job.

“It takes about two to five years to become a really good officer where everything flows,” he said.