Some officers still aren’t turning on body cameras
problem departments have grappled with in the rush to equip officers with body cameras. Though millions of dollars in federal and state grants have helped make the cameras standard equipment in major cities, their effectiveness still often depends on the officers who wear them.
Data from March released by the Minneapolis Police Department and published by television station KSTP show that officers wearing body cameras there recorded a little less than 20 minutes of footage for every eight- hour shift. Criminal justice experts said that number seemed low and was cause for a review that is underway among top city officials.
The Minneapolis department requires officers to turn on their cameras in more than a dozen instances, including for a traffic stop, search of a person or building and before the use of force. In the last instance, the policy says if officers can’t turn cameras on before using force they should do so afterward as soon as it’s safe.
“This is still a new technology. This is going to take some time to make it part of the DNA of what the police do,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director for the Police Executive Research Forum.
Cities across the nation have struggled to balance the need to capture footage with protecting individuals’ privacy and safeguarding against high storage costs for terabytes of recordings.
Columbus police are using body-camera footage while investigating an officer- involved shooting that happened on July 7 in Franklinton.
It’s the first time such footage has been available; only 115 Columbus officers are wearing body cameras so far.
The footage was released to the media Thursday.
It showed video of the shooting — but not audio — because the camera wasn’t turned on. When it was turned on, it jumped back and captured the previous 60 seconds, which included the shooting.
Columbus Police policy mandates that officers turn on the camera at the start of an enforcement action or at the first reasonable opportunity.