CSUMB police roll out body cameras

UPDATE 7/3/2017 4:30 p.m.:

Police officers at California State University Monterey Bay have a new tool in its arsenal. As of Saturday, all of the officers have been outfitted with body cameras.

School leaders believe CSUMB is one of the first Cal State campuses to implement the body cameras, since the chancellor’s office recently rolled out a system wide policy on the matter.

“Just keeps everyone safe,” said Det. Heather Murphy. “The officers are recording the public. The public knows we’re recording, which is nice because if they have an issue where they want to talk about something, it’s on video.”

At a time when everyone has a smart phone that can record video, campus police can now do the same in an effort to keep everyone honest and accountable.

It’s the officer’s responsibility to turn it on before every encounter with someone and to upload the footage to a cloud system if case it is needed. However, the cameras aren’t perfect, they can’t capture everything.

“Look at my size, if I was talking to someone 6’5″, I’m only going to have the range that’s on my camera,” Murphy explained. “So if someone’s really tall and I’m really short, I may miss something that’s happening way up high because I’m shorter.”

While students feel there isn’t a need for them on campus, they understand the roll a camera can play in telling both sides of a story.

“For the sake of honesty and getting the story right, it’s a necessity and in the eyes of the media, we sometimes leave one side of the story out, so the body cameras in that case would be great because you actually see what did happen,” Annalise Rodriguez said.

Other Cal State campuses working on implementation include San Jose, Fullerton and San Diego.

We reached out to the University of California, Santa Cruz about body cameras. School officials say it is something in the works for the entire UC system.

ORIGINAL POST:

Police officers at Cal State University Monterey Bay now have a new tool in their arsenal. As of this weekend, all of the officers have body cameras that record both video and audio.

The Department said it believes it is one of the first Cal State campuses to implement body cameras since the chancellor’s office implemented a system wide policy. They said it’s technology that keeps everyone accountable.

“Just keeps everyone safe, keeps everyone, the officers are recording the public, the public knows we’re recording which is nice because if there’s an issue where they want to talk about something, it’s on video,” said CSUMB Police Detective Heather Murphy.

Footage from the camera can be uploaded once an officer returns to the station and connects the camera to the cloud.

KION’s Mariana Hicks full story at 6 p.m.