EDITORIAL - Use of body cams now closer to reality?

Philippine National Police chief, Police General Guillermo Eleazar, has called for the formation of a technical working group to review the guidelines set by the Supreme Court for use of body cameras by policemen. The goal of this technical working group is to harmonize and synchronize these guidelines with existing rules of the PNP.

“On the PNP's side, we will make sure the guidelines that our justices spent long, hard hours crafting will be used to make transparency and accountability within our ranks common practice,” General Eleazar told reporters.

There are two ways of looking at this.

One is that he is finally implementing the use of body cams, especially in operations where violence is a likely outcome.

We can imagine how the narrative of some police operations can now be set straight with the addition of this silent witness. If used properly, body cams can remove doubt as to who fired first or if there was really deadly resistance to police authority, something which has now been infamously termed as “nanlaban”.

The other way of looking at this is that he is actually stalling for more time for policemen not to use the body cams.

The members of that technical working group have yet to be chosen. Streamlining the Supreme Court’s guidelines along with PNP rules may take some time.

Some of the more suspicious critics might even say the technical working group may be tasked to look for loopholes to work around having to use the body cams during certain operations.

But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Considering how much General Eleazar has been moving to improve the image of the PNP, it would seem he is really sincere in finally making body cams mandatory for some police operations.

If this is the case we wish for the expeditious streamlining between the Supreme Court guidelines and the PNP rules.

The sooner body cams become required equipment in some operations the better. Too many police operations have ended in suspicion, doubt, and heartbreak for some of us.