Best views, weather, etc. How to test them 👓 SC, Ala. sites look back Betty Ford honored
NEWS
Michael Brown

Police body cameras offer benefits, require training

Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY
Denver police commander Magen Dodge displays a body camera. Denver Police hopes to equip 800 police officers, including all patrol and traffic officers, with body cameras by 2015.

WASHINGTON — Although last month's deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., has accelerated interest in the use of officer body cameras to help identify potential misconduct, 75% of law enforcement agencies were not using the technology as of last summer, according to a Justice Department-funded report released Friday.

The survey of 254 law enforcement agencies, part of an 80-page review of the technology's application in daily law enforcement encounters with the public, also found that nearly one-third of the agencies that did deploy the cameras had no written policies governing their use.

Body camera technology has been largely emerging in the past decade, while dashboard surveillance cameras have been around longer.

"The recent emergence of body-worn cameras has already had an impact on policing, and this impact will only increase as more agencies adopt this technology,'' said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank that authored the report.

Although the report states that some law enforcement authorities are crediting the strategy with improving accountability, Wexler said in the report that the decision to use the technology "should not be entered into lightly.''

"Once an agency goes down the road of deploying body-worn cameras — and once the public comes to expect the availability of video records — it will become increasingly difficult to have second thoughts or to scale back a...camera program,'' he said. "Body-worn cameras can increase accountability, but police agencies also must find a way to preserve the informal and unique relationships between police officers and community members.''

Since last month, when the fatal shooting of Michael Brown prompted weeks of community unrest, body cameras have been touted as another check on the use of excessive force and discriminatory policing. Brown, a black teenager, was shot by white officer Darren Wilson. Ferguson police were not wearing body cameras at the time of the Aug. 9 shooting, though cameras have since been introduced.

The shooting is the subject of both local and federal investigations.

Earlier this month, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., went as far as to suggest that federal funds should be withheld from departments unless body cameras are deployed to officers.

"I think that (body cameras) would go a long way toward solving some of these problems and it would be a great legacy over this tragedy that's occurred in Ferguson, regardless of what the facts say at the end as to whether anyone is criminally culpable," McCaskill said.

After months of review, Friday's report offered a series of recommendation that address such considerations as: the scope of camera deployment; where the camera could be located on the body (chest, collar or sunglasses); the creation of recording policies (when and when not to record); and how the data should be downloaded and stored.

"Policies should be specific enough to provide clear and consistent guidance to officers, yet allow room for flexibility as the program evolves,'' the report states.

According to the report, agencies that have deployed the cameras spent between $800 and $1,200 for each device.

"Although the initial costs of purchasing the cameras can be steep, many police executives said that data storage is the most expensive aspect of a body-worn camera program,'' the report says.

Greenville, N.C., police Chief Hassan Aden told the report's authors that the data storage costs "can be crippling.''

The New Orleans Police Department, for example, has deployed 350 body cameras at an expected cost of $1.2 million over five years, with the bulk of the cost dedicated to data storage, the report said.

Many of the agencies that have deployed the cameras, however, are reporting measurable benefits.

Rialto, Calif., police reported a 60% reduction in use-of-force incidents following a pilot camera deployment program in 2012. There also was an 88% reduction in citizen complaints when compared with the year prior to deployment. "Whether the reduced number of complaints was because of the officers behaving better or the citizens behaving better, well, it was probably a little bit of both,'' Rialto Chief William Farrar said, according to the report.

Featured Weekly Ad