Malaysian police officers will start wearing body-worn cameras (BWCs or bodycams) from October this year. This was revealed by Bukit Aman Crime Prevention and Community Safety Department director Datuk Wan Hassan Wan Ahmad, who said that a total of 7,648 BWCs will be supplied to PDRM in stages starting September.
“The BWC will mainly be used by personnel in the mobile patrol vehicle (MPV) and the motorcycle patrol unit (URB), which are under the department. It will also be supplied to the Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department,” he said when contacted by The Star. The latter is JSPT, which traffic police fall under.
Wan Hassan said that the PDRM will take delivery of the BWCs in stages from September 2024 till February 2025. “They will be placed at 157 district police headquarters and 640 police stations nationwide. The use of BWCs will also be conducted in stages starting in October. We believe they will be fully utilised by MPV and URB personnel by March next year,” he said.
“The use of BWCs will have a positive impact on preventing acts of wrongdoing and issues related to integrity among police personnel and officers. The cameras are capable of recording the action of police officers in the field, including acts of wrongdoing,” he added.
Wan Hassan said that BWC use will be made compulsory when a cop is on duty and it will be an disciplinary offence if an officer fails to wear the bodycam. Also, the camera does not have a delete recording function and it will be able to record for up to eight hours.
Many in the public will be thinking of the police bodycams as ‘protection’ for us, but Wan Hassan says that BWC recordings can also be used to protect the force, and videos can be used as proof of a suspect’s verbal communication and actions, protecting officers from unwarranted criticism of their actions while carrying out their duties. The evidence works both ways, basically.
“The standard operating procedure (SOP) for the use of BWCs is being finalised before they are distributed to all officers nationwide. The SOP is important to ensure that the instructions to use the BWC is fully adhered to. The use of the BWC will move the police force forward as the sole enforcement agency using the latest technology, in line with modern policing.
“I hope the BWC will improve good governance in terms of crime prevention patrols by MPV and URB personnel. It will also improve the level of integrity among police officers, prevent wrongdoing, while the public will feel safer with the body cameras in place,” Wan Hassan said.
What do you think of this move by PDRM to equip officers with bodycams?
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Thumbs up!
AI losing more votes
Until camera broken / not working excuses. Spend millions to give crony supply camera contract but no use, might as well pay more to setup AES cameras so they can generate income instead.
So i can reject any interrogation /checking / runaway from it if i dont see any BWC on the police ?
Can negotiate early settlement after paste on body cam lens cover ok
How much do you trust them when they are rejecting IPCMC?
Cannot implement IPMCM bcoz good image elites need bad cops to do gray area work.
How much can you trust IPMCMC?
How do we know that the camera is on and not run out of battery? This will help the people to identify a legitimate road operation than the one privately run by off duty personals.
I think the polis need the rakyat to supervise the behaviour of the force as much as the polis helping the rakyat.
Get ready for all the “bodycam rosak” excuses everytime there is a need for data…
or they would stick a black sticker at the lens haha
I think the better way is, planned the day they wanted to set up “shop” at road, don’t charge the camera the day before “Operation”. Settle, battery habis, no video
The police officer who took bribe from two England traveler is to be blamed for this speedy decision on bodycam implementation.
Abang rakam abang janji delete lepas tu. No more. LOL.
the body cam is to protect 3 parties… police, public and government. however the protection to the government is being left out. with bodycam, people cannot simply blame the government for not doing enough and any summons collected will increase government coffers.
No delete button but they can still disconnect power or claim “rosak”.
have to enforce they are not allowed to turn off also, if rosak, have to get a replacement immediately or cannot be on duty outside. Hopefully they don’t apply the tidak apa attitude on this compulsory body cam
Can we GoPro the rozzers too?
Record up to 8 hours, but will the videos be stored in a central server and if yes, for how long?
Pls refer above
Nice daily jokes
Please do the same for JPJ
padahal malaikat kiri kanan dah ada merekod, masih ada berani minta rasuah
From our current experience with the police force.
It’s often that even a simple camera to take damaged vehicle photos by the police is faulty.
How many a times especially involving suspicious cases, the standard reply from the police will be… storage faulty or file compromised.
It will be the same for this so call high tech bodycam.
Haha… Traffic police?