O’Brien student interviews Milwaukee police officials about body cameras
Amid increasing challenges to their authority and troubling incidents of police shootings of unarmed black and Hispanic men, the Milwaukee Police Department has, like many others around the country, sought to respond to the public clamor for greater transparency.
But the August shooting death by a Milwaukee police officer of Sylville Smith, 23, put those aspirations to the test. The state’s Department of Justice took custody of the police video, but resisted calls to release it, citing an oft-used exemption to disclosure — that the investigation is ongoing and thus any disclosure could compromise the investigation. This exemption was asserted despite calls by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other elected officials for the video’s release. The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin also expressed concern, saying that by failing to do so, the police alone had the chance to define what happened.
Several months before that incident, Jenna Ebbers, a senior journalism major at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication, as part of her work on O’Brien Fellow Miranda Spivack’s journalistic inquiry into state and local transparency — or lack thereof — interviewed several Milwaukee police officials, including Chief Edward Flynn. The chief told Ebbers that his department would be among the nation’s most transparent.
Time will tell if Flynn was right. The Smith case is the first major test of the department’s intention to install body cameras on its sworn officers. Following the 2014 fatal police shooting of Dontre Hamilton, the local agency has worked with the U.S. Department of Justice on a two-year review known as a “collaborative reform initiative.” The results of that review were expected soon.
What follows is Ebbers’ report.
Is Milwaukee leading the way on body cameras?
Milwaukee’s police department began using video body cameras in October 2015, and by the end of 2016 was to have provided 1,200 cameras to uniformed officers and patrol sergeants. Body cameras have become one of the most popular hardware items purchased by police departments. In theory, they are supposed to provide an unfiltered record of events.
In many cases nationally — including the 2014 fatal shootings of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland and of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago, police reports on their own actions have conflicted with eyewitness accounts, and sometimes with videos — some by private citizens, some by police themselves. At the same time, more and more departments, saying they want to restore public trust and create video records of police action, have begun to require officers to use video cameras whenever the potential for conflict arises. The videos can provide crucial clues to what goes on between police and the public.
Police videos can have a downside: how and when police release the videos can raise privacy concerns for those civilians filmed in potentially embarrassing situations, including those involving domestic violence and rape, in which officers’ actions be required to be filmed.
At the same time, the footage can help the police and public learn what occurred and whether police reports and statements by civilian witnesses can be corroborated or disproved. In 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer, after having shot an unarmed man, stated in his report that the man had started to drive off and the officer was being dragged by his arm. The footage from Officer Ray Tensing’s body camera showed that the officer had mischaracterized — some would say lied about — the incident in his written report.
The system is far from perfect. There is uncertainty about what videos actually show, and how comprehensive the footage can be, given that officers in many jurisdictions, including Milwaukee, have some leeway as to when they must turn on the cameras. Milwaukee officers are supposed to turn on their cameras when they come into contact with a victim, suspect or someone they stop for a possible traffic violation, according to an October 2015 policy outlining officers’ responsibilities for using the body cameras.
Christopher Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, interviewed in early 2016, said he was skeptical that that body camera footage will help “cut down on frivolous complaints against the police.” He said cameras don’t record enough footage, or record from enough angles, to be considered definitive sources of what actually happened.
Milwaukee Chief Edward Flynn acknowledged the imperfections, but likened the utility of the footage to something that referees might examine in a professional football game.
“Having a body worn camera on an officer in a critical incident is not like the NFL’s instant replay,” Flynn said. “It would be like if the NFL put body cameras on offensive and defensive lineman. You’re not necessarily going to get the panoramic perfect view… of all the elements of the confrontation.”
Training required for Milwaukee officers
Before being assigned a body camera, Milwaukee officers are required to take classes to learn about the cameras, the policy and usage. These classes are given in four-hour increments divided into one hour of policy training and three hours focused on using the camera. The officers must take a total of 14 hours of training before hitting the streets with a camera on their bodies.
The Milwaukee department’s policy says that officers don’t have to keep the video cameras turned on all the time — to do so, the policy says, would not be practical or cost effective. The camera “must be turned on as soon as practicable and when safe to do so, once the member realizes he/she will be conducting a matter of an investigatory nature or an enforcement action.”
Many officers are using the cameras frequently. “I use it almost every interaction I have with the public,” said Officer Jeffrey Sather, part of the Neighborhood Task Force Motorcycle unit and who patrols throughout the city. Sather says it is a useful tool for the police and the public, allowing comparison between the written reports and the video. “It shows the activities of the officers, and that they’re factual on what they put on their reports,” he said.
Officers with assigned body cameras are supposed to turn on cameras for all contacts including: vehicle stops, impaired driver investigations, field interviews, dispatched calls for service, transporting civilians or prisoners, searches of persons or property, crime/crash scenes, giving Miranda rights, vehicle and foot pursuits and emergency response to critical incidents. Officers are encouraged — but not required — to alert the public that they are turning on the camera and that anyone in its range might be filmed. Police have discretion to turn off their camera in during potentially sensitive circumstances, including cases involving sexual assault, statements made by children, and when a civilian asks not be recorded while giving a statement to the officer.
Cameras are mounted on the officer’s shoulders or headpieces, and hold roughly nine-and-a-half hours of footage until they need to be imported. Footage is to be downloaded on a secure server after every shift and then thoroughly logged and labeled by the officers.
What happens to the footage?
As Milwaukee’s police department, like many others across the country, collect hundreds of hours of videos every week, they must also sort out what happens to the videos once they are created. Who will get access and what will the department be allowed, under Wisconsin’s public information laws, to withhold? The issue has become a major concern for transparency and privacy advocates across the country. The Milwaukee department’s policy says it will retain the videos for 130 days, at which point they will be erased unless they are needed for an ongoing investigation. “No one may edit the original video at any time,” the policy says.
To create this policy, Sgt. Doug Wiorek, executive officer of information technology, said he and others in the department, including the chief and public records staff, first looked at examples from 30 to 40 departments around the country. Wiorek did most of the research and worked with Flynn and the Wisconsin ACLU to figure out what elements of public information and privacy laws needed to be incorporated into the department’s policies and procedures.
“Police will be the most documented workers in the nation when this is all over,” Flynn said in the interview. The chief said he is a longtime proponent of body cameras, because he believes that the cameras enhance truthfulness to officer reports and transparency with the public.
The department ultimately decided that body-worn camera footage would be released to public record in accordance with existing public records laws — but also that prior to that release, the department’s open records office would redact footage to protect privacy of those in the video.
Pros and cons in Milwaukee
Reaction to the department’s use of body cameras has been mixed. While police officials say they are pleased with the process thus far, others expressed concerns about the department’s use of the cameras, in particular rules governing when an officer must turn on the cameras, and when an officer can work without being filmed, since the officers retain wide discretion. Ahmuty of the state ALCU said, for example, that much remains to be worked out, and that Milwaukee’s launch of the cameras has been “shaky.”
The video is stored on a privately owned server site, Evidence.com, owned by Taser, which produces the cameras. The name of the site itself has caused Ahmuty some alarm. He said he thinks that it shows that the footage is collected as evidence usable to defend officers in court and not just a form of police accountability. The distinction between evidence and accountability is important to the ACLU, Ahmuty said, because accountability is necessary to gain public trust, as well as ensure the officers would comply with the policy’s regulations.
Ahmuty recalled an incident in December 2015, when police officers detained the 16-year-old son of State Sen. Lena Taylor (D), who was stopped when he was seen running with a turkey in his arms after a community food drive.
Taylor did not respond to requests for comment, but she suggested in an television news interview that her son was stopped because he was a young African-American male who was running. Taylor’s son had been delivering a turkey to a neighbor after a food drive the family had participated in earlier that day. He was stopped by the police and put in a squad car where he was questioned, the senator told the station. She said that the police footage was incomplete, and in some of the interview, only audio was available. Taylor also added that the camera was not turned on until her son was already in the squad car, so it wasn’t clear what happened before.
Police released the video two months later, but Taylor said it did not show the full story of what she believed happened. Flynn, while not addressing the Taylor stop in his interview, said the department would make adjustments as needed.
Chief says policy is a work in progress
“This is going to be a work in progress,” the chief said. “The policy is not written in granite. As our police department and the police profession gets more experience with body worn cameras, we’re going to have to adjust to others’ experiences.”
Wiorek echoed that view. “It’s just nice to have that unaltered footage. … The body cameras allow us to start from start to finish with the video clip so we can see everything within the full context.”
Wiorek said Milwaukee officers are generally in favor of the cameras’ quality. Milwaukee Police Association President Michael V. Crivello did not respond to requests for comment.
Wiorek said the cameras already have proved to be valuable. He recalled a tactical incident where the public was misinformed that police had shot someone. When the footage from that live camera was released, the sergeant said, they were able to show “that wasn’t the case and that the guy had taken his own life, unfortunately.” He added: “Overwhelmingly, the officers are doing the right thing and this footage just helps that.”
Ahmuty said the public should be careful about what they say when being recorded, and suggested that Miranda rights are still paramount and that citizens still have the right not to talk to the police. “What you say may be used against you,” he warned. “Just because an officer has a camera, doesn’t mean you should start talking to them.”
Flynn and Ahmuty did agree on one thing. As the chief put it, “There’s no technological way to guarantee public trust in the police.”
