The Boston Police Department’s six-month body camera pilot program is set to conclude next month, although city and police leadership favor extending the 100-camera program.

Andrea Campbell, who chairs the City Council’s Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee, said the pilot seems to be going well.

Getting the program under way was an extended process. Announced in fall 2015, and planned for a spring 2016 start, the implementation was delayed in the face of opposition from the city’s largest police union, the Boston Police Patrolman’s Association (BPPA), which asked for an injunction to block the initiative, arguing that the city violated an agreement to do a voluntary pilot program.

Police Commissioner William Evans, who testified during the two-day court hearing in September, said he had the authority to assign cameras to officers after none volunteered for the pilot and a judge ruled in his favor.

Officials briefed the public on the pilot program’s project in January, saying that overall, “this has been a positive program,” Campbell said. “What’s great about hearing the positives is it pushed back on some of the assumptions that officers would not like wearing body cameras, that it would take away their discretion, or that it would have a negative impact on civilian and officer relationships,” she said. “And we’re seeing the exact opposite.”

Evans and Mayor Martin Walsh are in talks with the police union to extend the program, which Campbell says she fully supports.

For the long term, organizations like the Boston Police Camera Action Team (BPCAT) and the NAACP are pushing for permanent use of the cameras by the police. BPCAT released a statement after the Jan. 19 public meeting, objecting to a pilot extension:

“We do not support an extension of this pilot program,” the group wrote. “We do not believe further data is required to judge the merits of its success. Body-worn cameras are not the civil rights issue of our generation and do not warrant prolonged discussion. They are, however, a common sense issue, and one on which the people have already spoken.”

The team has scheduled a series of public meetings on the subject. The first was held on Wednesday night at the Grove Hall Community Center at 6 p.m. The others are set for Temple Israel at 6:30 p.m. on March 1 and the central branch of the Boston Public Library at 6:30 p.m. on March 20.

Campbell says the program’s cost analysis is of particular interest, as “there have been different figures thrown around, all in the millions” – ranging from $3 million to $12 million – “but I’ve never seen a detailed analysis of what it would actually cost to outfit the 2,000-plus officers in the BPD, and I think constituents want to see that.”

Some grant money has been provided for the pilot from the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety. Given President Donald Trump’s stated priority of supporting law enforcement, Campbell suggested that a creative policing solution like body cameras may open the door for federal funding.

If the pilot is not extended, a report likely would be generated in the fall with an analysis of the pilot’s effectiveness, metrics, and data. An extension, for which the timeframe is uncertain, could push the full evaluation into 2018.

Some debate still remains over the implementation, Campbell said. “There are some residents who don’t want to see body cameras, and some of them are in communities of color, because of the surveillance issue,” she noted. “So I don’t want us to think everyone in a community of color supports outfitting officers with body cameras.”

However, based on community meetings, activist outreach, and hearings, Campbell said, “most folks support body cameras as an effective tool for great community policing.”