Police officers in the community and traffic divisions of selected prefectural police departments will wear body cameras beginning in the next fiscal year as part of a pilot program, the National Police Agency has announced. 

Questioning of individuals, policing of traffic violations and other activities will be filmed on the spot. Footage will be temporarily stored on police station computers for around three months.

One of the program’s intentions is to keep objective records of interactions between officers and those they police to determine whether they performed their duties appropriately should complaints or other needs for review occur.

Records will also be used for criminal investigations as the need arises, NPA officials said on Oct. 17. 

The NPA will study the results of the trial program to scrutinize its effects and root out its challenges toward its goal of introducing a similar setup on a full-scale basis across Japan.

In the pilot program, 39 cameras will be kept at police stations and motor patrol units under the jurisdiction of three major prefectural police departments. These are to be used by community officers.

Eighteen more cameras will be distributed at police stations under three prefectural police departments for traffic officers.

The program will also have 19 cameras kept at nine prefectural police departments for use in crowd policing, including at event venues visited by large numbers of the public.

The prefectural police departments where the cameras will be introduced are still being chosen, officials said.

Cameras are about the size of business cards and officers will wear them on their chests or elsewhere.

Community police officers are to turn on their cameras from when they leave a police station or a neighborhood police box and set about their duties until their task ends.

In taking account of privacy, they will pause recording in instances such as listening to victims seeking advice and when entering residences.

Traffic officers will also stop filming when issuing traffic tickets.

RACIAL PROFILING COMPLAINTS

NPA officials said they will set operation guidelines for the trial program and present them to prefectural police departments in the coming days and months. The prefectural departments will work out their own guidelines afterward.

“The footage to be recorded contains personal information, so we will clearly define the purpose of filming,” NPA Commissioner General Yasuhiro Tsuyuki told a news conference on Oct. 17.

Footage will be saved on the camera and then transferred to a computer for storage after the wearer returns to a police station. 

“We will also stipulate in our operation guidelines, for example, that data management should involve setting limitations on the devices where it can be stored and permission by a senior official should be a requirement for viewing footage,” Tsuyuki said.

Excluding outlying circumstances, in addition to deleting records after the three-month period, officials said only a small number of senior officials will have access to the data.

NPA officials also explained they believe no new legislation is needed if the cameras’ purpose and means remain within reasonable limits, just like security cameras set up on streets.

They said the cameras will record, in principle, even when policing subjects do not want to be filmed.

Officials are mulling over options to alert people that they are being filmed. For example, a red light on a camera or having officers wear armbands that say “recording.” 

NPA officials said they have decided to take the latest measure in light of the “rising public interest in the way that police officers perform their duties.” 

“We will explain carefully to the public how we are operating the program, which we hope will help explore the future potential for practical use of the setup,” Tsuyuki said.

This likely refers to the trend of people recording themselves being questioned by police and later posting the videos on social media. Uploaders were critical of officers' questioning practices and racial profiling that resulted in targeted investigations and other forms of policing based solely on an individual’s race or skin color.

As officials continue preparing to launch the program, some police officers are already wearing cameras while on duty. 

Officers on motorcycles and members of the so-called "running police" who run marathon courses alongside athletes as part of their venue patrol duties are among them.