Nearly 3,000 body cameras used by the New York City police department have reportedly been pulled after one “burst into flames” while an officer was on duty.
“It unexpectedly began to smoke and fell from his shirt to the ground” around midnight outside a precinct house in Staten Island, an unnamed official told the New York Daily News. “It then caught fire and was damaged.”
Police Commissioner James O'Neill issued an order Sunday suspending any use of the model LE-5 body cameras due to the “possible product defect.”
“There is the potential for the battery inside the camera to ignite. The cause and scope of the defect are currently being investigated,” a statement warned, The Daily Beast reported.
The order affects about 2,990 cameras being used by officers in 15 out of 77 police precincts, as well as several other commands, the news outlet reported. The NYPD uses about 15,500 cameras in the field and plans to outfit all of its officers with cameras in the coming years,.
"The product is generally crap in all models," one unnamed NYPD official told The News. "It's not good in the field. They break easily."
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