SMILE

LAPD Orders 7,000 Body Cameras

To increase transparency.

On Tuesday, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the planned rollout of 7,000 body cameras for LAPD officers. “The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment,” Garcetti said. “This is built on transparency.” The move comes after the conflicting accounts from the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, in which an officer shot and killed an unarmed black teen, and the nationwide protests that resulted. The president of the police commission, Steve Soboroff, had been raising private funds for body cameras for the past few months. “There are more and more advantages of having cameras than we’ve ever thought,” Soboroff said. “It’s music to the ears of the LAPD and law enforcement and the community.”