Scorecard Evaluates Civil Rights Safeguards Of Police Body Camera Programs
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Results demonstrate a “nationwide failure” to protect civil rights.
As incidents of alleged police brutality are making headlines across the nation, many cities — including smaller communities — are re-examining the issue of adopting body cameras for their local police forces. The City Council and Police Chief of Erie, PA — a community of roughly 100,000 individuals, recently sat down to discuss the possibility officers could be wearing body cameras sometime soon, despite challenges associated with them.
As these debates over body camera adopts heat up, however, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Upturn have released a scorecard that evaluated the civil rights safeguards of policy body camera programs in 50 U.S. cities and found a “nationwide failure to protect the civil rights and privacy of surveilled communities,” according to a press statement.
“As police departments across the nation begin to equip more officers with body cameras, it is imperative to recognize that cameras are just a tool — not a substitute — for broader reforms of policing practices. Without carefully crafted policy safeguards, these devices could become instruments of injustice rather than tools of accountability,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We hope that our scorecard will encourage reform and help departments develop body camera policies that promote accountability and protect the rights of those being recorded.”
The scorecard evaluates programs based on eight criteria derived from the Civil Rights Principles on Body-Worn Cameras signed by a broad coalition of civil rights, privacy, and media rights groups in May 2015. The scorecard evaluates whether each department:
- makes its policy publicly and readily available
- limits officer discretion on when to record
- addresses personal privacy concerns
- prohibits officer pre-report viewing
- limits retention of footage
- protects footage against tampering and misuse
- makes footage available to individuals filing complaints
- limits the use of biometric technologies
The study highlighted two positive trends, including the fact that departments are establishing explicit procedures that allow recorded individuals access to the footage of their incidents, with Cincinnati, OH, Chicago, Parker, CO, and Washington, D.C. each providing special access to recorded individuals; and new limits on the use of biometric technologies like facial recognition in response to concerns from civil rights groups.
Among the negative trends identified by the study: no department evaluated fully met the criteria of all eight categories, and only 13 departments were able to fulfill the criterial in more than two categories. Ferguson, MO and Fresno, CA failed on every measure. Additionally, none of the department policies analyzed had a blanket limitation on officer review of footage before filing a written incident report. And even when departments have camera programs, nearly half don’t make them easily and publicly available on their department websites.
“Body cameras carry the promise of officer accountability, but accountability is far from automatic,” said Harlan Yu, principal at Upturn. “Our goal is to help departments improve their policies by bringing attention to areas where policy improvements can be made and highlighting promising policy language from around the country.”
This scorecard represents a ripe opportunity for vendors who are providing the surveillance equipment to also bundle those sales with appropriate guidelines and training for accompanying policies for implementation and use of said cameras.