Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced that LAPD officers will officially begin wearing on-body cameras that will record their interactions with civilians. 
 
 The new effort begins with 800 taser body cameras funded by more than $1.5 million in private donations. The Mayor said that his next budget will include funding to outfit the entire department with body cameras. 
 
 The Mayor's statement from the release: 
 
 Out on the street, things aren't always clear cut. These cameras will help law enforcement and the public alike find the truth — and truth is essential to the trust between the LAPD and the community, which has been a key factor in lowering crime to record lows," Mayor Garcetti said. "I want to make sure LAPD is on the cutting edge when it comes to crime suppression and constitutional policing. 
 
 
 
 The LAPD is hardly the only department adopting cameras, but this effort he most ambitious wide-scale roll out to date. Most large cities from Las Vegas to New Orleans to New York remain in the testing phase at this point. 
 
 The LAPD frequently finds itself in bitter confrontations with its community. It began testing the technology with 30 cameras back in January. 
 
 Body cameras have recently been thrust into the center of the debate over police violence against civilians. The family of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has stated that it should be a national priority, and President Obama has proposed $75 million in funding to help the nation's police departments acquire and store the hardware. Though body cameras have been demonstrably shown to help reduce police violence they remain controversial. Opponents argue that the evidence won't ultimately be useful, and that the cameras amount to nothing more than another surveillance system that will be abused. 
 
 The LAPD is one of the biggest departments in the country, so you better believe this is the way the current's going. 
 
 Updating as we learn more.... ||||| LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Mayor Eric Garcetti on Tuesday afternoon announced his plan to outfit every Los Angeles Police Department officer with body cameras. 
 
 The announcement comes in the wake of unrest after the fatal officer-involved deaths in Ferguson, Mo., Cleveland and New York City. 
 
 Garcetti says Los Angeles will be a nationwide leader in the use of body cameras. 
 
 Despite the recent shooting deaths and calls from President Barack Obama on the issue, Garcetti says the plan for on-body cameras has been in the works for more than a year. 
 
 LAPD officers assigned to foot patrols in downtown began wearing and testing on-body cameras paid for by private donations in January. 
 
 An estimated 2,000 cameras are needed to outfit every officer in the department. 
 
 The Hawthorne and Anaheim police departments have also made moves to outfit their officers with the cameras. 
 
 RELATED STORIES: 
 
 Anaheim Police Officers To Wear Body Cameras Starting Next Spring 
 
 Hawthorne Mayor, Police Chief Call For Body Cameras On Officers 
 
 LAPD Officers Test On-Body Cameras ||||| Nearly 3,000 body cameras are being pulled off the streets after one exploded inside a Staten Island precinct overnight, NY1 has exclusively learned. 
 
 It happened early Sunday at the 121 Precinct stationhouse as a patrol officer prepared to head out for the midnight shift. He noticed smoke coming out of the bottom of the device and took it off his shirt before the unit exploded. A photo of the exploding body camera, which the NY1 investigative team obtained, can be seen in the video above. 
 
 The officer wasn't injured, but it appears this was the result of a defect that causes the camera's battery to ignite. 
 
 16 precincts across the city use these cameras, the Vievu LE5, and as a result Police Commissioner James O'Neill is prohibiting officers from using them until the defect is fixed. 
 
 In a statement, an NYPD spokeswoman said, "Nothing is more important than the safety of our officers, and equipping the NYPD with the best equipment is a paramount priority. All officers assigned LE-5 cameras were instructed to immediately remove the cameras and bring them back to their commands. The Department is in the process of collecting and removing the LE-5 cameras from the commands." 
 
 There are 2,990 of this specific camera in use in 16 precincts across the city. In total, the NYPD has deployed 15,500 body-worn cameras. The earlier version, the LE4, is not affected by the defect. 
 
 The NYPD launched its body camera pilot program in 2017, and is on track to equip all 22,000 patrol officers with cameras by the end of 2019. 
 
 The city's largest police union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, declined to comment on the incident. 
 
 But the use of body cameras has been a sensitive issue with the union for years. 
 
 The police department moved to adopt body cameras after a Manhattan federal judge ordered the department test them as a way to curb stop-and-frisk searches of black and Latino men that she ruled unconstitutional in 2013. 
 
 The police union, which is fighting to block the public disclosure of encounters on police body cameras, won a major victory last month, when a state appeals panel blocked the release of NYPD body camera footage until it hears arguments in November. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association says the department's release of footage is "illegal and arbitrary." 
 
 In a separate case, NY1 has sued the NYPD to get access to the footage from the 2015 pilot program, arguing that the video is part of the public record. 
 
 Main story image above: A file image of a body camera.
– Los Angeles has announced the country's biggest police body camera program so far, with plans to buy 7,000 cameras to record every LAPD officer's interaction with the public. The rollout will begin with 800 body cameras funded by $1.5 million in private donations, and Mayor Eric Garcetti says his next budget will provide funds for thousands more, Gizmodo reports. The cameras "are not a panacea, but they are a critical part of the formula," the mayor said at a press conference yesterday. "The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment. Trust is built on transparency." Steve Soboroff, chief of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, helped raise money for the cameras. He calls the plan a "very big deal" that could set a precedent for other big-city police forces, the LA Times reports. "There are more and more advantages of having cameras than we've ever thought," he says. The body camera plan has been in the works for at least a year, before a spate of controversial officer-involved deaths in cities including Cleveland, New York, and Ferguson, Mo., CBS Los Angeles reports. Many police forces are still only in the testing phase for body cameras, although Ferguson cops started wearing them in September.