Canadians across the country mark Remembrance Day
Today Canadians will remember and honour the sacrifice of men and women in uniform who gave their lives in service of the country's values and principles.
An influential policing think tank is pushing law enforcement agencies to change how they handle body camera footage after police shootings, saying officers should not be able to review video before making their first statements to investigators.
The Police Executive Research Forum changed its position in a report released Friday, nearly 10 years after the group was first tapped by the U.S. Justice Department to write guidelines for agencies adopting body cameras.
The technology has swept the country's police since. Now 79 per cent of the country's local police work in departments that use them. They're in use in all cities of more than one million people, and Portland, Oregon, became the latest major city to adopt them in November.
鈥淗aving a body camera in your department is now expected,鈥 said Chuck Wexler, the group鈥檚 executive director.
The technology has been key in cases like the death of Tyre Nichols, where body camera footage showed how he was brutally beaten by Memphis, Tennessee, police who are now facing criminal charges.
Still, research on whether body cameras reduce police use of force overall has been mixed. Half of the studies reviewed by the group showed officers with cameras tend to use force less often, but the rest of the studies showed no difference.
Friday's report, an advance copy of which was provided exclusively to The Associated Press, also said departments should have clear policies on releasing video footage to the public. Of the 127 agencies it reviewed, only 14 per cent had specific policies for releasing body camera footage of critical incidents.
The adoption of body cameras by police departments around the country increased sharply during the national outpouring of protest after the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri.
鈥淭here was a lot of faith put in body cameras as a silver bullet to some of the problems that many police departments have," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. 鈥淏ut a lot of that promise has not been fulfilled.鈥
Allowing officers to view body-camera footage before speaking to investigators can allow their stories to change to fit the video, either through lying or subconscious distortion of how they recall the event, he said.
鈥淧olicies like this one undercut the oversight function that the tool is supposed to play,鈥 Stanley said.
Agencies have already been moving away from allowing viewing footage ahead of time, and the new recommendation could hasten that process, Wexler said. The research forum is now recommending a hybrid approach where officers give an early interview before watching the video during investigations of shootings or other uses of force, then come back and give more information.
Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, said he'd be concerned that kind of approach could 鈥渇urther curtail the rights of officers,鈥 and could expose officers to allegations of perjury if their first statement didn't match the video.
Lorie Fridell, professor emerita of criminology at the University of South Florida, said the blend could work well since memories are imperfect, but cameras don't always capture every angle and nuance, either. 鈥淲e have the officers' perceptions and memories, which are fallible, and we have the body camera documentation, which is also fallible,鈥 she said.
Kevin Davis, chief of Fairfax County police in Virginia, also sees virtue in taking officers' statements before showing them the footage.
鈥淔or the sake of community trust and transparency, why not do it that way?鈥 Davis asked.
Today Canadians will remember and honour the sacrifice of men and women in uniform who gave their lives in service of the country's values and principles.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says that Tom Homan, his former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, will serve as "border czar" in his incoming administration.
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Applause erupted over and over at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg Sunday as the son of Murray Sinclair, a former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, spoke about his father.
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A man who was critically injured in a police-involved shooting in Hamilton late Sunday afternoon has died in hospital, says the province鈥檚 police watchdog.
In his column for CTVNews.ca, personal finance contributor Christopher Liew offers a step-by-step guide on how to make the shift from renting to becoming a homeowner, and what you can start doing today to help the process go smoother.
A congestion crisis, a traffic nightmare, or unrelenting gridlock -- whatever you call it, most agree that Toronto has a congestion problem. To alleviate some of the gridlock, the Ontario government has announced it plans to remove bike lanes from three major roadways.
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A Vancouver man is saying goodbye to his nine-to-five and embarking on a road trip from the Canadian Arctic to Antarctica.