Police to introduce bodycams this spring

The police will start using body-worn cameras, or bodycams, on a national scale this spring, said the National Police Board in a press release on Wednesday.

The Helsinki and Eastern Uusimaa police departments have piloted the use of bodycams and owing to the good experience they will now be introduced in all police departments.

To prepare for the use, the National Police Board published instructions on the recording of police tasks with a bodycam or other technical equipment.

The instructions focus on the use and principles applied to bodycams and other technical devices intended for recording, fixed on police officers or their equipment during their assignments.

In addition, the instructions focus on data collection during police operations done with a bodycam or other technical device in general control and surveillance situations.

In police bodycam operations, the principal starting point is openness and transparency of the activities. The devices are used visibly and the video recording is made known, as far as possible, to the person being videoed.

“It is also important from the device utilisation perspective that they can be used in any type of police assignment in which recording is necessary. The purpose of the use of the devices is to collect the same information that the police are getting through normal observation,” said the National Police Board Deputy Commissioner Sanna Heikinheimo.

All information recorded by the police is not saved in police person registers – only the footage that is appropriate and necessary for police assignments at hand.

“The use of the bodycams will improve the collection of data in daily police operations. The footage can be used, for example, as evidence and proof of criminal and traffic cases. The introduction of bodycams also improves the legal protection of both the police and the targeted individuals,” added Heikinheimo.

The police utilises technical surveillance for general order and safety purposes as well as in traffic control.

According to Heikinheimo, it is possible that the new modes of operation will raise needs to revise the respective legislation.

To record police operations with a technical device and the comprehensive use of the footage are important issues from the data protection perspective. For example, the possibilities to use face recognition technology should be clarified as the technical observation and collection methods become more common in policing work.

Each police department has the technical readiness and the bodycam devices available to start the bodycam operations in the spring once the police staff has had the respective training.