Vancouver Reporter

Vancouver officials could be considering police body cameras in the budget after a year and a half of requesting from residents, according to an Oct. 16 article from OPB. 

While Vancouver officials appeared to have been ready to make a budgetary decision regarding the cameras in this fall's budget planning sessions, they've been put on the back burner again; the camera technology is not listed in the city's $1.3 billion two-year budget that Vancouver will be deliberating over the next month. 

The decision to exclude the cameras came as a surprise to the Vancouver Community Advisory Task Force on Policing, a group just created in June of this year that advocated for the eventual use of the cameras. 

“I don’t believe body cameras should be put on hold,” Kim Schneiderman, a task force member and the executive director of the southwest Washington offices of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said in the article. “It’s a necessary part of overseeing what people are doing. My opinion is it just needs to happen. … I’m pushing and I’m sure others will be, too, to get them up and running as fast as possible.”

The issue with funding the cameras comes at a time when Vancouver's policing and oversight environment is fraught with tensions, as it is across the nation.

Vancouver city manager Eric Holmes told OPB that Vancouver is “moving forward with crafting a body-worn camera program for VPD, which will be presented to City Council this fall in the context of the 2021-2022 budget.”