Saskatoon residents show near-universal support of police body cameras: survey

SASKATOON -

98 per cent of survey respondents support the use of body-worn cameras by police, according to Saskatoon Police Service (SPS).

That finding was among those included in the Community Satisfaction and Policing Priority Survey presented to the Board of Police Commissioners on Thursday.

In addition, 88 per cent of respondents believe the use of body-worn cameras will increase public trust in police.

The report said it is encouraging to see the positive public sentiment surrounding upcoming changes related to service delivery, including body cameras.

SPS is planning to start using body cameras early next year. A previous report from the spring said the service is working to finalize various policy issues like when cameras will be turned on and off and which officers will wear them.

A minority of respondents to the survey did state come concerns with body cameras: 23 per cent were concerned that cameras were reliant on officers turning them on while seven per cent were concerned about invasion of privacy.

University of Saskatchewan assistant sociology professor Scott Thompson said the issue with a survey of this type is it doesn’t reveal exactly what respondents were thinking.

“Some people might say ‘Is this a question about a police accountability? And yes, we would like greater accountability,’” he said.

“But people can also be reading it as now officers are going to be recording every single move in our entire community, right? So you can read that two very different ways. So what you always want to do when you have a survey of this kind is go back and ask those questions.”

Other findings from the survey included:

• Respondents of Indigenous ancestry typically hold less favourable perceptions of SPS, a similar finding in previous versions of the survey.
• 37 per cent of respondents believed crime in their neighbourhood has increased in the last five years, an increase over past years.
• Drug law enforcement and robbery continued to have the highest perceived priority among city-wide problems, with poverty/homelessness and public safety seeing the largest increases.
• 71 per cent of respondents found social disorder to be the most important issue in the downtown, specifically homelessness and panhandling.

The survey was made via telephone to a sample of 526 respondents between Oct. 7 and Nov. 9. All respondents were Saskatoon residents and over the age of 18 and results were weighted by age, gender, Indigenous ancestry, and minority status to match the 2016 Statistics Canada Census.