SALT LAKE CITY — Police shot and killed a knife-wielding man in West Wendover Saturday. Just four days earlier, an armed robbery suspect was killed by officers during a pursuit through Ogden.

At least 12 other people in Utah have died as the result of 11 more officer-involved shootings since the beginning of October, including one police officer.

Salt Lake County has witnessed 19 officer-involved critical incidents in 2018 alone — 12 more than the year before, and five more than the year before that, according to Cottonwood Heights Police Lt. Dan Bartlett.

When Salt Lake County officers are involved in a critical incident, a team of investigators from multiple law enforcement agencies will examine the evidence, then present its findings to the county district attorney. The district attorney will then determine whether the officer’s actions were justified and whether criminal charges should be filed.

Part of that evidence often includes footage from officers’ body cameras. Yet, cameras are just one part of the investigation, Bartlett said.

In a world where police shootings often dominate the headlines, Americans, at least, expect to see body-camera footage following an incident. But not all officers wear cameras or even have them turned on when something happens.

Here’s a look at some lesser-known facts about body cameras.

Do all police officers wear body cameras?

Short answer: no.

Body cameras are expensive, and departments must choose which officers will wear them, if they wear them at all. If an officer is assigned a camera, that camera is theirs and programmed for them. It does not get passed around depending on the shift or call, according to Unified Police Sgt. Melody Gray.

There are 178 patrol officers in the Unified Police Department and 125 total body cameras, Gray said. Some of those cameras, however, are also assigned to SWAT teams, the metro gang unit and canine officers.

The department tries to split the cameras evenly between shifts and precincts but does not send officers with cameras to specific calls, Gray said.

“We never have any idea what (a call) is going to require, what’s going to happen and when. So calls are assigned based on priority first and availability of the officers,” she said.

Utah law mandates, however, that each police department have a policy requiring an officer executing a warrant to wear a body camera when one is available. Officers are also required to “ensure the proper functioning of their equipment, to wear the camera so that it is clearly visible, to activate the camera prior to an encounter and to document when a body camera was used in an encounter.”

When do officers wear the cameras?

Officers assigned to body cameras will generally always wear them attached to a visible place on their clothes, like their vest or sunglasses. They may, however, occasionally wear different equipment that does not have the camera attached.

The officer who shot the armed robbery suspect in Ogden was not wearing a body camera at the time of the incident because he had opted to wear a steel plate vest that is more bulletproof than an everyday tactical vest, said Ogden Police Deputy Chief Eric Young. The vest was not equipped with his camera.

When do officers turn the cameras on?

Officers’ cameras are always rolling but also … not, Gray said. If an officer hits the record button, the camera will jump back 30 seconds and start recording from that point. Although the camera is always rolling, it does not capture sound until someone pushes the record button. That’s why the first 30 seconds of body-camera footage the public sees is usually silent, Gray said.

Officers may only deactivate their cameras when “consulting with a fellow officer, during periods of inactivity, when conversing with a victim, witness or informant or if an individual requests that the officer stops recording,” according to Utah law. They must also document when the camera has been deactivated and for what reason.

Police cannot delete any footage, so if they forget to turn their camera off when they should have (the department doesn’t want extensive bathroom break footage), they have to go through a supervisor, who will review the video and delete it, Gray said.

At the end of each day, officers dock their cameras and the footage is downloaded, she added.

How much do the cameras cost?

Unbeknownst to many, body cameras are much more expensive than the camera itself, Gray emphasized. The price tag also includes things like licensing, software and storage space for footage. It’s an ongoing cost, she said.

The Unified Police Department is the only department in Utah that received a federal grant to jumpstart its body camera program in late spring of 2017.

The department was initially awarded nearly $182,000 to purchase 240 cameras, but higher-than-anticipated costs for things like licensing and software meant Unified was only able to purchase 125, Gray said. The department eventually de-obligated over $35,000 in federal funds due to changes in the projected grant budget.

The department has also spent nearly $200,000 of its own money, bringing the total cost to almost $350,000 for about a year and a half.

What effect do body cameras have?

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding related to bodycams and the footage of bodycams and how those play into each case,” Gray said. “My understanding is that we haven’t seen any changes in anything since the inception of bodycams.”

She did acknowledge anecdotally, however, that she believes people are less likely to complain about officers when they discover a body camera was recording the incident.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the pre-eminent study on body cameras was a field experiment conducted by the Rialto, California, police department. The study found that when police were equipped with cameras, the “use of force incidents and citizen complaints against officers were reduced by 50 and 90 percent, respectively.”

More recent studies have found similar benefits, but also note the challenges that body cameras present to police forces – including the financial costs, efforts spent on officer training and procedures, and the psychological effects on the officers involved.

Gray believes one of the biggest misconceptions about body cameras is perception.

“If you were to close one eye and walk around, that’s all you’re seeing," she said. "You’re not seeing anything that the other eye sees. More than anything, I think it helps the public see what happened.”

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