Fairfax police tweak plan for body-camera pilot program

Fairfax County police announced Dec. 19 that the department would add Reston District Station to the pilot program for body-worn cameras, which is scheduled to launch in March 2018.

Fairfax County supervisors in November voted unanimously to implement the program at the police department’s Mount Vernon and Mason district stations. Officials selected those locations because of the diversity of the communities, their varying types of service calls and the number of incidents in which officers had used force.

Once the implementation team began to examine how the equipment would be distributed, officials determined there would be enough cameras available to expand the program. Initially, the 230 cameras were going to be issued to every patrol officer working at the Mount Vernon and Mason stations.

However, the department also is working with a research team at American University that will gather and study data over the course of the pilot program. As with all research and case studies, department officials thought it was important to have a control group in each station to allow for a more accurate compilation of data.

As a result of the program change, only half the patrol officers in each of the stations will be issued a body-worn camera. This left a number of cameras available.

The Reston area was chosen because it differs from the two police districts already included in the program, officials said. Reston District patrol areas include a number of high-rise buildings as well as stops along Metro’s Silver Line. Additionally, the Reston District Police Station is the newest among the department’s eight stations and already has the physical infrastructure in place to accommodate the program’s technical needs.

County officials project that the addition of a third police district to the body-worn camera pilot program will not increase costs.