\t\t\t\t\t In Montreal\u2019s 2026 budget, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada\u2019s administration pledged<\/a> to spend $40 million on police body-worn cameras and additional security cameras over the next 10 years if the Quebec government approves<\/a> the use of the technology.<\/p>\n But some researchers, activists and politicians argue that body cameras are costly, invasive and often fail to address systemic issues.<\/p>\n Craig Sauv\u00e9, a former Montreal city councillor and the leader of the political party Transition Montr\u00e9al (TM), told The Link that TM opposes the technology and does not see it as a \u201csustainable solution\u201d to police brutality.<\/p>\n Sauv\u00e9 expressed concerns about the technology’s limited effectiveness<\/a> in jurisdictions where it has been implemented and says he would instead like to see the Bureau des enqu\u00eates ind\u00e9pendantes (BEI) do a better job of holding officers accountable for brutality.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we really have to be working on is improving the socioeconomic status of our citizens,\u201d Sauv\u00e9 said, adding that improving Montreal\u2019s social safety nets would reduce<\/a> crime and the need for heavy policing.<\/p>\n Ted Rutland is a Concordia University professor, human geographer and policing researcher. Rutland said that after more than 15 years of body camera usage, research<\/a> has not demonstrated improved police accountability or reductions in police violence and racism despite widespread and costly implementations of the technology in some jurisdictions.<\/p>\n Rutland also noted that in the past decade, many police killings of civilians have been filmed on smartphones without the officers involved facing any consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to deal with the fact that the video evidence is not holding police accountable,\u201d Rutland said. He pointed to the fact that the BEI recently chose<\/a> not to charge any of the officers involved in the 2025 killing of Abisay Cruz despite smartphone video evidence of the killing.<\/p>\n \u201cBut [smartphone recordings] help to give a more accurate representation of what the police actually do,\u201d Rutland added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rutland criticized disproportionate police killings of BIPOC<\/a> people and people with mental illness<\/a> in Canada, and the lack of consequences faced by SPVM officers who kill civilians.<\/p>\n A member of the Defund the Police coalition, who was granted the pseudonym Hugo Gareau for safety reasons, said the origin of body cameras as a \u201ctool for transparency\u201d can be traced back to the early 2010s.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBody cameras were actually originally marketed as a tool that would make the police more effective at repressing people, at surveilling people and at convicting people,\u201d Gareau said.<\/p>\n Gareau pointed to early marketing<\/a> by Axon\u2014then known as Taser\u2014that positioned body cameras as a way for police to protect themselves from lawsuits.<\/p>\n The company only began promoting the technology as a way to promote police reform after the police killing<\/a> of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.<\/p>\n In Rutland\u2019s opinion, body cameras were not introduced to protect civilians or hold police accountable, but to gather evidence and surveil citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe evidence that they\u2019re collecting through the body cameras\u2014which is 99 per cent just interactions with citizens that they\u2019re targeting\u2014can be used in court, either to extract a plea deal or to convict someone,\u201d Rutland said.<\/p>\n Rutland is skeptical of the Montreal Police Brotherhood\u2019s support<\/a> for body camera implementation.<\/p>\n He suspects that the organization has ulterior motives, pointing to past statements where the Brotherhood has expressed a desire<\/a> to combat the narrative created by social media footage of police violence.<\/p>\n Gareau expressed similar concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBy [equipping all police with] body cameras, we are basically deploying 4,000 new security cameras that are moving around across the city,\u201d Gareau said. “It’s an unimaginable expansion of the surveillance network.”\u00a0<\/p>\n The SPVM reports on its website<\/a> the management and use of 46 urban security cameras across Montreal. This excludes Metro cameras and traffic cameras, which are managed by other bodies.<\/p>\n Gareau also expressed concern that the police video database created by widespread recordings could be used to surveil protesters and that the SPVM\u2019s new artificial intelligence video surveillance software<\/a> may be utilized to track activists.<\/p>\n They added that they believe that if footage is released to the public, it could be selectively released to make the police look good while violating civilians\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n \u201cOftentimes, the police encounter people in the worst moment of their lives,\u201d Gareau said. \u201cTo have that recorded and disseminated is a huge violation and devastating for people.\u201d<\/p>\n For Rutland, the solution to police violence is not body cameras or diversity training for police officers. It is to reduce the role of the police and instead use unarmed, nonviolent response teams for scenarios like mental health crises.<\/p>\n \u201cMany cities are introducing a fourth response team<\/a>,\u201d said Rutland. \u201cThey respond to 911 calls that have nothing to do with crime or violence, which is the vast majority of mental health calls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sauv\u00e9 said he would support the implementation of a fourth response team, adding that TM proposed spending $20 million to develop a similar team in Montreal in the 2025 municipal election.<\/p>\n Rutland believes that governments should focus on investing in reducing violence and crime instead of further investing in the police, who primarily respond<\/a> to violence after it has already occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gareau also emphasized that body cameras cost millions of dollars a year and said that they believe those funds should be reallocated to community organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sauv\u00e9 said that he would rather see the funds\u2014which come from Montreal\u2019s capital investment, or infrastructure budget\u2014used for infrastructure, such as for building community centres and libraries that will \u201cimprove the quality of life for our citizens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRepression is not working,\u201d Sauv\u00e9 added, noting that increases in police spending have not been proven<\/a> to reduce crime rates.<\/p>\n Sauv\u00e9 said he believes the focus should be on \u201cevidence-based policy,\u201d and that criminology researchers have demonstrated<\/a> that improving civilians\u2019 socioeconomic conditions, education and overall opportunities is the solution to reducing crime.<\/p>\n He added that the SPVM regularly exceeds<\/a> their allocated budget (by around $55 million in 2024<\/a> and $60 million in 2025<\/a>) and argued that the city should instead invest that money in supporting its civilians, particularly those at risk of ending up in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s put this money where it\u2019s going to have real effects [in] improving quality of life and bringing down crime,\u201d Sauv\u00e9 said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 11, published March 17, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts and advocates say body cams are a surveillance tool that benefits police, not the public NewsCl\u00e9o Clamen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-542446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/11_NEWS_Bodycams_AnikaYvette_900_678_90.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\tExperts criticize investment in police body cams. Graphic Anika Yvette<\/p>\n