Police to wear body cameras in WA trial

A new report published by the Leadership Conference, a coalition of civil rights and labor groups, evaluated 25 police departments around the country on their uses of body-worn cameras and found that all have room to improve when it comes to the relatively new technology.

But first they want you to know the rules for the use of these cameras.

Everything from routine traffic stops, to burglaries would be recorded.

“Video takes a lot of space and if you’re recording a few hours of video in any given night that they work, and given that employee works a couple hundred days a year, it’s a lot of video”.

“As we’ve seen in the incidents going on the community has no say so and cameras aren’t on, any other time so every box would’ve been exed”.

Experts cited the fear that biometric technology, such as facial recognition, voice recognition and other identification software, could ultimately turn a tool for greater accountability into a tool for real-time surveillance. It also examines additional departments that have made news for police violence, including Ferguson, Mo., and Cleveland; have received a significant amount of federal funding for programs, like Seattle, New Orleans, and Albuquerque; or have one or more policies that show particular promise, like Oakland and Parker, Colo. With several high-profile incidents calling into question policing tactics and policies, many agencies have turned to body-worn cameras as a way to document their daily interactions with the public. He also acknowledges the devices don’t always tell the whole story but he says without body camera footage we will only have the police narrative to rely on.

The scorecard examines the nation’s largest police departments with body-worn camera programs: NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Phoenix, Baltimore, Miami-Dade, Las Vegas, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin.

About a third of all departments do not make their policies public and readily available on the department’s websites. Those cities provide individuals, including those seeking to file a police misconduct complaint, with a specific process to view the footage captured by the body cameras. But even those cities meet just four of the eight standards put forward by the group.

As part of the program development and requirement of state law, the Police Department will begin drafting a policy govern the use and management of the cameras and video data.