Handful of officers to carry body cameras in pilot program
Greek Police is outfitting some officers with body-worn cameras as part of a pilot program initiated in response to accusations of heavy-handed police tactics to quash street protests.
About 20 officers of the motorcycle police unit DRASI and the crime prevention and suppression team (OPKE) will wear the new cameras, likely as of Tuesday, according to a official from the Citizen Protection Ministry.
The cameras will be activated during police operations or any clashes with protesters, sending the footage back to the police’s Unified Coordination Center.
As of Monday night, efforts were still underway to fix technical issues pertaining to the cameras, the same official said.
Another 20 cameras of a different type which are supported on a stick will be used in a pilot program by riot police (MAT) officers.
These were first used in December 2020 during a march marking the deadly shooting of a teen by police and more recently in the evacuation of an administration building at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In both these cases, however, technical problems were identified.
Speaking in Parliament during a debate about police violence, Mitsotakis proposed that police officers carry body cameras as well as improved training and psychometric tests for new police recruits.
