WASHINGTON — A third Fairfax County police district has joined the soon-to-be launched program to test out body-worn cameras.
The Reston police district will now be part of the Fairfax County police body-worn camera pilot program, which is set to start in March 2018 and could run up to six months. The Mount Vernon and Mason police districts were originally selected as part of the pilot program.
Maj. Christian Quinn with Fairfax County police said the police department is working with an American University research team, which will collect and analyze the data from the program.
But in order to do that he said the researchers need to study and compare officers with the cameras and officers without the cameras — meaning not all of the officers will be outfitted with the body cameras at the Mount Vernon and Mason police districts.
“What that did is free up the actual devices, the resources that they could be deployed elsewhere. We opted to select the Reston station,” said Quinn.
“The number of cameras remains unchanged in terms of how many officers are capturing digital video evidence,” he added.
Adding the third district isn’t expected to increase the cost, he said. In total, the department will probably have about 300 cameras, but they won’t all be deployed at the same time.
The AU research team is still finalizing the details on the program, and who will get the cameras.
”Our officers currently are on 11 1/2-hour shifts, an A side and a B side,” Quinn explained. “So by the flip of a coin, the researchers at AU are going to determine whether it’s the A side or the B side that’s going to be the control group or the study group.”
He said that group will be compared against the group of officers who don’t have the cameras.
“They’re going to be compared to officers working the same district station, serving the same community but on different days from what their peers were working, wearing cameras,” Quinn added.
Funding for the pilot program was unanimously approved on Nov. 21 by the county board of supervisors.
