Overland Park police deploy 200 body cameras to officers in the field

Overland Park police officers this week began wearing body cameras that sync up with the existing dashboard camera systems in their vehicles, a move department officials say will help improve transparency.

However, some advocates say that to be truly effective in building community trust, the city must also set a policy ensuring that footage captured by the cameras is available to the public upon request.

The deployment of the new body camera systems comes after nearly 10 months of field testing, with six test cameras used by officers in the field since last December. On Monday, the department put the cameras into full circulation, deploying 200 of them to officers working in traffic safety, emergency services, community policing and school resource officer assignments. Cameras are also available to detectives working on investigations.