The Evolution of Police Use of Body-worn Cameras: From Evidence Capture to Live Support

In 2022, South Wales Police & Gwent Police put their contract for cross-force body-worn video technology out to tender. The acquisition and implementation was led by Inspector Bryn Glennie, who argued that the ability to live stream video was essential. For him, it was about safety: both of the public and the officers on the ground. The Reveal K-Series camera comes equipped with live streaming capabilities, alongside a host of other features as standard, and so Reveal (and the K-Series) won the contract. Inspector Glennie reflects on the potential of live streaming: 

 “When I speak to other forces, they are very interested in the potential of live streaming, and we've already built up an abundance of anecdotal evidence of the positive impact it has. 

 We've positioned live streaming as a supportive feature. It can be there for your safety. It can be there for your professional development. Ultimately, this is about us delivering a better service. 

 We currently have our cameras configured in a way that the only way it can be activated is manually by the operator, so no capability for remotely activating it.”  

Live Streaming is commonly used to bring central experience or judgement to those that need it. That might be giving commanders wider context with a fully-integrated surveillance capability in incidents of public disorder, or simply supporting student officers, new to their beat.  In both cases, the technology gives Senior Officers the ability to see what's going on in any situation at any moment in time, and respond accordingly. That can mean deciding on the deployment of resources; the development of tactics – or, it can be the ability to offer real-time advice and guidance to an individual officer at a scene. A great example of this comes from one incident in South Wales.  

Here an individual barricaded himself into a property, with officers in attendance trying to arrest him. The individual threatened to harm anyone who entered, so it was a high-stress, high-pressure scenario. 

Command implemented their standard protocol: to call out a negotiator to try and peacefully resolve the situation. However, while the wheels were set in motion to physically get someone there, officers at the scene were asked to activate their K7’s Live Streaming capability. Inspector Glennie explains:

“The Negotiation Co-ordinator was able to give the officers at the scene immediate tactical advice - methods and language to use to engage with the individual and encourage a peaceful surrender. And a peaceful surrender is exactly what we got.

We utilized the specialist skill of the coordinator alongside the non-specialist skill of the PC at the scene to reach a peaceful conclusion, way before the negotiator arrived at the location.”

Ian believes that AI is key to making investigations quicker – streamlining the journey of the video evidence from camera to the judiciary. 

“We are already seeing early guilty pleas as a result of body-worn video footage. And often being able to get that footage in front of the jury and judiciary reduces the need to re-traumatize victims and witnesses, and it reduces the need to take officers away from their day-to-day role to go and give evidence in court. 

AI can produce real-time transcriptions of recordings. That’s a time saving, and also means the asset is immediately searchable – helping to connect pieces of evidence. So now our stop and search portfolios are saying they want to use AI to highlight keywords. For example, they want to see if at any time in an exchange if somebody's used a derogatory term.”

And it’s not just faces. AI has the potential to recognise objects – for example a firearm or knife being drawn – and, in a heightened situation like that, could automatically trigger all other Force body-worn cameras in the immediate vicinity.  

Away from capabilities like AI which can grab the headlines or attention, the shift to a new coding for the video evidence files provides a very practical feature.  

H.265 halves the file size but without impacting the quality. A smaller file size means smaller storage requirements but also, crucially, shorter upload times to the evidence management platform – particularly when wireless uploading from the camera in the field. Inspector Glennie explains why this is significant:  

“Uploading used to be a minute-for-minute process – so 30 minutes of material could take 30 minutes to upload. It was previously the case that, once back at the station, Officers would have to wait half an hour or more to be able to review or categorise a potential piece of evidence. Now, officers can start to wirelessly upload whilst in the community so all the evidence is there to work on the moment they get to their desk.” 

South Wales Police and Gwent Police acquired over 4,000 K7 cameras. In the past that would have required the physical docking capability for that number of cameras to upload. But wireless uploading changed that approach. With over half of uploads happening in the field, the docking station requirement dropped by 80% - a significant cost saving. 

“That, for me, is a real efficiency. Imagine a scenario where multiple officers record an arrest. Now, just one of those officers needs to take the individual back and into custody while the others can upload their footage remotely. And should they need to activate their camera again during upload, it simply pauses the data upload, and records the new footage. This means there is more opportunity to keep our Police officers in the communities they serve.”