As body cameras gain popularity, policies in question

Only eight of 68 law enforcement departments received grant money from the state to buy body cameras in 2014.

ABC 17 News received the list of applicants from the Department of Public Safety for its Local Law Enforcement Block Grant program. Law enforcement departments across the state requested a total 505 body-worn cameras. However, the state awarded the eight departments a total of 71 cameras.

“It’ll just take away a lot of those ‘he said, she said’, ‘they said, I said.’ You’ll know what the officer said,” Boonville Police Chief Bobby Welliver said the day his department received its body cameras.

Earlier this week, officers with the Boonville Police Department received their new Digital Ally body cameras, many of them purchased with the state’s grant money, and the other seven paid for by the city of Boonville.

“[The officers] really feel like it will make their job much easier, it will refute some false claims, and they’re just absolutely thrilled to have them for a department our size,” Welliver said,

The department will have twenty body cameras for each of its officers, including Chief Welliver. At a little more than 8,000 people, Boonville is one of the larger towns, and police forces, to receive the body cameras through the LLEBG.

–Bernie Police Department – 7 cameras

–Beverly Hills Police Department – 13 cameras

–Boonville Police Department – 13 cameras

–Brookfield Police Department – 11 cameras

–Clarkton Police Department – 3 cameras

–Mountain View Police Department – 6 cameras

–St. James Police Department – 9 cameras

–Washington Police Department – 9 cameras

“I think they’re going to become more of the norm,” St. James Police Chief Ron Jones said of the body cameras. “You get issued your duty belt, your gun, you’re also going to get issued your body camera.”

The St. James Police Department, an hour south of Jefferson City, has used some body cameras for several years, Jones said. However, the older models were bigger, and pinned onto the officers’ uniforms. They often fell off if an officer ran or walked fast.

“The cameras we’re getting now, they’re a lot smaller, they pin in, they’re not as heavy, they’ve got a battery pack that goes inside the officer’s pocket,” Jones said.

Both police chiefs touted the help the cameras will bring towards internal investigations. Complaints and compliments towards police can be accurately examined, and recalling details from the scenes of crimes can be found within the video taken from the camera. What might have been a violent encounter before is cooled by the presence of a camera rolling.

“There’s going to be a certain amount of people that aren’t going to do the same things they did, because they know that will enhance the punishment when they get to court,” Welliver said.

Bringing the new technology into police work, though, means crafting nearly brand new rules for its use. Many departments already use dashboard cameras in its cars, and the necessary digital storage space for the video it takes. Unlike dashboard cameras, though, departments are recording nearly every interaction an officer has with someone. For investigations, such as murder scenes, the video can last hours, quickly taking up space on department servers.

Welliver said the department recently purchased more server space in preparation for the body camera use, increasing their storage to 18 terabytes.

But not every situation will be caught on camera. Victims of sexual assault may not want their reports to be recorded, and witnesses may feel uncomfortable with their conversations, and faces, on tape. A report on body cameras from the U.S. Department of Justice notes the “legalistic” feel using body cameras may bring to everyday interactions police have with the community.

Welliver said his department would not record statements given by confidential informants, but understood that some instances may call for the camera to stop rolling.

“The citizens have some control over that,” Welliver said. “We would prefer to have it on every time, but we know there’s going to be some instances where we have to have some discretion to get the information.”

Developing these rules and policies may be the future of every department in Missouri. Five bills in the state’s General Assembly would require departments to use the cameras. However, none of them have had a hearing yet. One bill in the Missouri Senate, though, would stop the state from requiring the cameras. Also, it would keep the public from requesting the video captured on those cameras, or any police camera, from public records requests. Senator Doug Libla, a Republican from Poplar Bluff, sponsors the bill, and heard support and opposition at a hearing on the bill.

“By not making this video public record, it kind of seems almost useless to even have body cameras, when the purpose of a body camera is to create a system where we can see what happened,” said Jasmin Maurer, a member of the Don’t Shoot Coalition in St. Louis. “It’s not just, ‘the police say this happened and the person they were interacting with said this happened.'”

Welliver, though, feels some material should be off-limits to the public.

“People don’t have an expectation of privacy when they’re out in public,” he said. “But inside your house, if we were investigating a burglary. I don’t feel like your neighbor ought to get that video and look in.”

Under current state law, police cannot release video if it’s involved with an active crime investigation.

For all of its perceived benefits, from both law enforcement and the public, it still has its limitations. Technological problems may cause cameras to not record, and, as the Department of Justice report notes, recording may change the nature of once-casual police interactions.

“It’s not a cure-all,” Welliver said. “The camera’s not going to catch every single thing. But it’s better than what we have now.

“I hope that I conduct myself and officers conduct themselves in a way that it doesn’t matter when they record or not,” Welliver said.