A civil-rights coalition has given Los Angeles police a mixed review on whether its body-worn camera policy enhances or undermines accountability.
The policies of 25 police agencies across the country were scored by the Washington, D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights with the help of technology consulting firm Upturn. The scorecard was based on eight criteria outlined in a document of shared principles signed in May by a broad coalition of civil rights, privacy and media rights groups.
“Without carefully crafted policy safeguards, there is a real risk that these new devices could become contributory instruments of injustice rather than tools for accountability,” Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told reporters on a conference call this week.
The Los Angeles Police Department was among several police agencies surveyed that were fully credited for making its body-worn camera policy, which is online, “publicly and readily available” in contrast to cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore and Detroit which either did not have their policies online when evaluated or did but they were not easy to find, according to the report. LAPD was also fully credited for limiting officer discretion by requiring officers to record the entire contact of “any investigative or enforcement activity involving a member of the public,” including pedestrian stops, foot pursuits, arrests and uses of force. The department requires officers who fail to record a required activity to document their reason in writing in multiple reports and systems, the report noted.
Pre-Report Viewing Criticized
But like the vast majority of agencies evaluated, LAPD was given the lowest possible score for requiring officers to review the recordings before filing documentation. While many body-worn camera policies allow officers to review footage as they complete their written reports in an effort to be accurate, the practice gives officers an undue advantage over other witnesses in a court of law, argued Harlan Yu, a principal at Upturn.“Pre-report viewing creates an uneven playing field and in the worst case, an officer could conform his report to match only what is shown in the video rather than the report being an independent account of what he or she actually saw,” Yu said on Monday’s conference call.
Los Angeles Police Commissioner Robert M. Saltzman voted last spring against the camera policy, which was approved 3-1 with one absence, partly over this issue. While officers who have been involved in a use-of-force issue or are the subject of a complaint should be allowed to view the video later in the process, it’s important to hear from them beforehand since “we are trying to ascertain the officer’s perception and belief at the time of the use of force,” he said.
But Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, argued that accuracy and consistency are very important since the federal government can charge officers with obstruction of justice if the camera footage differs from the report they filled out.
“We’re all about accuracy and that’s why we’re adamant about having them review it” in advance, said Lally, who called the department’s policy “very fair” overall.
LAPD was awarded $1 million by the U.S. Department of Justice in September for the purchase of body cameras, one of more than 70 agencies nationwide awarded some $19 million for their purchase. City officials plan to distribute a total of 7,000 cameras to outfit field officers by the end of next year. The city began rolling out hundreds of body-worn cameras to officers at several police stations in August, including LAPD’s Mission station.
Another Low Score
The scorecard also gave LAPD the lowest score for not making footage available to individuals filing police misconduct complaints. Washington, D.C., and the small town of Parker, Colo. — which has been lauded by civil rights activists for its policy — provide complainants with a special process to access relevant footage, Yu said. Most of the other departments reviewed rely on state and public record laws to provide access to footage. In California, since the state’s Public Records Act provides a broad investigatory exemption, “no footage is required to be made available to anyone outside the department,” Yu said.Saltzman wanted LAPD’s policy to allow the footage to be made available to people making complaints and to the media when there is significant public interest in the case.
“One of the most important purposes of body-worn videos is transparency, to let the public see what is happening in cases where there are concerns,” he said.
But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and Mayor Eric Garcetti have generally spoken out against that, arguing they want to preserve evidence in criminal investigations and prevent footage that’s potentially embarrassing to victims from being aired.
Finally, the department was given a low score for not placing any limits on the use of biometric technologies, such as facial and voice recognition, to search such footage. Civil rights groups are worried that such technology could soon identify individuals in real time or after the fact, Yu said. The Baltimore Police Department was the only agency reviewed that placed sharp limits on its use of biometric technology or explicitly mentioned it in its policy, he said.
“Body cameras should be used as a tool for accountability, not as a tool for surveillance, and limiting biometrics is an important part of that,” Yu said.
The Los Angeles Police Commission will have an opportunity to revisit its policy and make revisions in the coming months, Saltzman said.
©2015 the Daily News (Los Angeles) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
