NEW YORK - Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced a major change to the NYPD's body camera policy that will require the department to release footage within 30 days of an officer killing someone.
Going forward, the Mayor says the recordings will be released when an officer fires a weapon and the bullet either hits someone or comes close to hitting someone; if a civilian is killed or hurt during a tasing incident; and if an officer using physical force results in death or injury.
Previous guidelines said body camera footage could only be released with the police commissioner's approval.
All the eligible footage will first be shown to the civilians involved or their families before it's released online to the public.
"We hope to never have these kind of incidents to have to release this footage, obviously, or very rarely when an officer needs to use their weapon and gun discharges have gone down steadily," said De Blasio. "It's important to recognize even as there's anger and pain, that retraining and deescalation, the different approach to neighborhood policing is correlated with a great decrease in gun discharges and adversarial situations. We want to see that consistently go down."
As of last year, all patrol and specialty unit officers have been wearing body cameras, bringing the total number of cameras to around 24,000.