Police officers in Luxembourg will be equipped with tasers from next year, Home Affairs Minister Léon Gloden said on Wednesday, as he unveiled plans for the force to receive bodycams within weeks.

Tasers are to be given from the beginning of 2026 to officers within special units of a newly created operational support group within the police, Gloden said at a press conference alongside Alain Engelhardt, the deputy director general of the police.

However, other police units will not yet receive tasers, Gloden said, explaining that he did not want to make their use widespread “right away”.

Bodycams will be worn from 1 July by police officers, Gloden confirmed, with the cost of the project expected to be around €3.2 million over five years.

Around 1,300 devices manufactured by Motorola will be distributed to 33 police stations around the country ahead of their introduction. Traffic police and officers at the airport will also be equipped with the devices, and some will also be used at the police training centre.

“They’ve been talked about for a long time, now they’re here,” said Gloden.

How the cameras work

The bodycams will be mandatory, said Engelhardt, and are worn at chest height and record continuously – but without automatically saving the data.

The video footage is only saved when an officer presses the record button or draws their weapon. The 30 seconds before the shutter is released are also saved retrospectively.

“This gives us a good overall picture of the situation,” said Jeremy Chiodo, project manager for the Grand-Ducal police.

The recordings will be stored for 28 days in the cloud of a German provider unless they are needed as part of an investigation, police said, in which case the footage is kept for longer.

This is what the bodycams look like © Photo credit: Anouk Antony

Alain Engelhardt, the deputy director general of the police, is hoping for many advantages from the bodycams © Photo credit: Anouk Antony

The bodycams are intended to provide better protection for both police officers and citizens. “The aim is to have fewer offences against police officers because the cameras have a de-escalating effect,” Engelhardt told the Luxemburger Wort. “If an incident occurs, we have objective images that show what happened. This enables the case to be resolved safely and more efficiently.”

There were more than 400 instances of people resisting police intervention and over 1,300 reports of verbal abuse against officers in the period between 2020 and 2024, while proceedings brought by the police watchdog against officers over their own conduct reached a record high last year.

(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated, with editing and adaptation by John Monaghan.)