Cathedral City Police Officers wearing new body cameras

After six months with Cathedral City Police, Joe Brooks and his fellow officers have a new tool to use on duty.

“It’s kind of exciting, [and] it’s kind of new stuff for me anyways,” Brooks said.

The department is the first law enforcement agency in California to use GoPros as body-worn cameras.

While being equipped with them for about month, officers said the device will help with accountability and transparancy in the field.

“It gives the public to see the officer’s side, and how to react to certain things compared to sometimes how the media comes out with it,” Brooks said.

Officers said the GoPros give themselves a wide, clear look when responding to every call.

“This is a profession where much of what the officers do is cordial and very business-like, but there are those times when there’s conflict,” Lt. Glen Haas with Cathedral City Police said. “And when there’s conflict, there’s going to be two sides, three sides to every story depending on who you ask. This video gives the police department the ability to recreate the event as it happened on that video.”

Giving officers a whole new look to help out in the future.

“This is in its infancy, if not it’s infancy, then it’s a toddler at this point,” Haas said. “And we need to continually go back and review how can we best view the system to improve what we do, and to improve our legitimacy with the public.”

Haas said administrative staff have not made a decision yet on whether videos will be released to the public.