Nearly two years after the police department abruptly ended a test run of locally-made wearable cameras for officers—following objections from the Seattle Police Officers Guild—the city is taking another look at the technology.

In a press release sent  out this morning, council member Bruce Harrell says he wants to put cameras on officers out on the street to "assist the City’s public safety efforts and reduce potentially violent situations." Officers would be able to record interactions and arrests on the street much as they already do with cameras installed in patrol vehicles.

Harrell's technology committee is digging up the seemingly dead issue of cop cams at a meeting next Wednesday (12:00pm at City Hall), where the committee will demo pager-sized wearable cameras made by local company Vievu—formed by several former Seattle cops—and Taser International.

The cameras are already being tested in the UK and San Jose, and SPD did its own brief trial run with Vievu cameras last year.

I'm all for the technology and it's great that the cameras are finally being discussed again. As SPD has no doubt learned in the last few years, cameras are everywhere, so they might as well have their own.

SPD should get these cameras out in the field as soon as possible, but there are at least two big hurdles to overcome here:

First, the city would need to bargain with the Seattle Police Officers Guild to get cameras on officers. 

A number of cops I've talked to either don't mind or flat out love the idea of wearing cameras. It makes documenting suspects' behavior easier, and can be used to shoot down claims of officer misconduct. Cops would also be recorded on the supposedly tamper-proof cameras, hopefully providing some assurance that people on both side of an arrest will behave themselves.

The police department's also struggling with some major budget cuts, so it's not clear where the money to pay for the cameras would come from.

We'll have more on this as it develops over the next few months/weeks/years.