That step forward could solve one of the main concerns about the cameras that has arisen since the department started testing them more than a year ago: whether the cameras are on when they need to be. All patrol officers have had the cameras since February.
Departments across the country have explored the need of so-called body cams for a while, but the issue has become hotter since President Obama announced this month that he wanted to make federal money available for departments to buy cameras. That move was made in the aftermath of Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a move that reignited riots and protests in Missouri and nationwide. Officer Darren Wilson was not wearing a camera during the incident. Wilson is white, and the 18-year-old Brown, was black.
“Body cameras became of interest (for law enforcement) long before the events at Ferguson. But that single event really escalated the requests to look into them further, said Greg Deyer, the national sales manager for Digital Ally. “In January of this year, we were working with roughly 300 agencies, but today we have well over 1,300 agencies who have either purchased our system or is testing and evaluating it.”
One of those clients that is part of the first number is the Evansville Police Department. Every Evansville patrol officer has been equipped with body cameras since February and testing here started in 2013. After Obama’s announcement, Indianapolis and Louisville were among the cities that announced they would start testing cameras.
Sgt. Jason Cullum, an Evansville department spokesman, said other departments reached out to Evansville since the department first announced their program, proof that departments all over have been at least thinking about implementing cameras even before recent events.
“We’ve had a steady flow of phone calls since we implemented the program,” Cullum said. “I don’t know if we’ve necessarily seen a spike in the last couple of weeks or even the last couple of months.”
He said recently that having them has been a good thing, though Cullum stressed the small cameras are simply one tool that investigators can use in criminal and internal affairs cases.
But instances of officers either turning the camera on in the middle of interaction with the public or not at all shortly after the technology was introduced has still left lingering concerns of whether the system can be trusted. Two such occasions involved white officers interacting with black citizens either during the testing phase of the cameras or less than a month after they became standard issue.
During the first instance, two police officers stopped George Madison Jr., a black firefighter who was on his bike at the time. The camera that one of the officers was using as part of the department’s pilot testing program was started after Madison was on the ground in handcuffs. Madison claimed he waved at officers before they stopped him and that they got angry with him when he tried to use his phone.
In March, officer Ryan Winters shot Arthur Fingers after a high-speed chase on the Lloyd Expressway in a parking lot off Green River Road. Winters was cleared of wrongdoing. According to investigators, Fingers failed to comply with repeated commands to show Winters his hands and was reaching into his waistband when he was shot, police said.
Winters did not start his body camera at anytime during the incident. At the time, Cullum said Winters was certainly among those who “wished” he had turned his camera. During a community forum in August, Fingers told a crowd at the Potter’s Wheel that he did not fault police for the April incident.
Cullum this month told the Courier & Press that turning on the camera anytime an officer interacts with the public should now be second-nature and said, ‘We are past the point where it is an acceptable excuse to just say ‘Well, it’s new and I forgot to turn it on.” Cullum said patrol supervisors now conduct random audits to make sure cameras are being used and that officers who don’t can face discipline.
“The policy is when you’re dealing with the public you have to use it. They are required to use it on dispatched runs and self-initiated (runs),” said Cullum, who noted that there was no official policy in place when the Madison stop occurred. “A police run is a police run, whether it’s a code 3 emergency or just a routine standby for property all of those are supposed to get (recorded).”
The new technology that Digital Ally just introduced wirelessly activates an officer’s body camera as soon as a police cruiser’s emergency lights are turned on. Such a move would be welcomed by the local chapter of the NAACP, which initially lobbied for the department to require that a camera be on at all times during a shift.
“The body cams were something that we requested and thought would save the city of the Evansville a lot of problems and lawsuits back then ... and that it would take a lot of the suspense and the he said-she said out of the situation if those body cams were on 24 hours a day (or whenever the officer is on duty) ” said The Rev. Gerald Arnold, who is the head of the Evansville chapter of the NAACP.
The headquarters of the NAACP put out a statement urging all departments to use body cameras to record all police actions with citizens shortly after the grand jury’s decision was made at the end of last month.
Here locally, Cullum also made assurances that the footage itself that is downloaded from an officer’s camera cannot be altered by the officer or anyone else. An officer also cannot access the camera’s video before it is downloaded. Cullum said such a safeguard is one of the main reason that Digital Ally was chosen as the department’s vendor.
“That’s not possible,” Cullum said about whether it is possible to alter the footage. “Any time someone gets on there, it shows who watched it, when they watched it and if they burned a copy of it. We can’t alter it: We can’t change the sound in it. We can’t cut in the middle and then cut back in.”
During the last year, police department officials have released footage taken from an officers’ camera of commendable actions as well. That includes video of an officer helping a wheelchair-bound man to safety after a neighboring Line Street home caught fire in late March.
Despite the praise for the new cameras, Cullum said any footage remains just part of what is used when it is used in both criminal and internal affairs investigations.
“It’s a piece of equipment. It’s a tool that plays a role into our investigations,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it’s just once piece of the puzzle.”
He also cautioned the public not to draw conclusions about an event simply from body camera footage of an incident, noting that incidents such as use of force cases are going always going to look violent to some.
“The phrase that the video speaks for itself is a very dangerous phrase,” Cullum said.
©2014 the Evansville Courier & Press (Evansville, Ind.)
