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Baltimore County Police Complete Body Camera Program

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BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore County police say they've finished training and equipping about 1,400 officers with body-worn cameras.

The county began giving officers cameras in July 2016. The initial plan was to roll them out by 2018, but the program was accelerated after criticism related to the fatal police shooting of Korryn Gaines in 2016. The shooting was not recorded on body cameras.

Since officers first started wearing cameras, the county has handled more than 250,000 recordings covering 45,000 hours of video footage.

In 2017, seven people have been shot by county police officers - three of them fatally. Portions of each of the incidents have been captured on body cameras, but the moment of the shooting was not recorded in every case.

The first five years of the program is expected to cost $7.1 million.

Don Rush is the News Director and Senior Producer of News and Public Affairs at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.