A bystander’s video recording of a South Carolina patrol officer fatally shooting a fleeing suspect in the back earlier this month has rekindled consideration of adding video recording devices to patrol officers’ uniforms, an issue that has been on the table in Naperville in recent months.
Naperville, which early last year installed dashboard cameras in its 40 squad cars, has been looking at having its sworn officers wear body cameras while on patrol. According to Police Chief Bob Marshall, a variety of issues remain to be resolved before a decision is made on the matter.
At least one veteran of law enforcement agrees it makes sense to proceed with caution on the issue.
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“I know there’s pros and cons,” said Mayor A. George Pradel, who spent nearly 30 years as a Naperville cop before taking office two decades ago. “I think we have to do a lot of research, and not jump to conclusions.”
In some jurisdictions, disagreements and complications have arisen in the wake of policy implementation related to body cameras, which cost between $600 and $900 each. Lawmakers in some states have introduced legislation to establish exemptions from public records law for video recordings of police encounters with citizens, according to reports by the Associated Press..
“(Using) body cameras is something law enforcement is looking at throughout the country,” Marshall said during the Sept. 16 City Council meeting.
Among the variables in play, he said, were revisions in eavesdropping laws being considered in Springfield. The process of determining when recordings can be made legally remains ongoing, the chief said this week.
“The feedback I received from our state’s attorney is to wait until the legislature straightens out the eavesdropping statute,” Marshall said.
Department members in Naperville recently took part in a workshop on the topic, Marshall said, and input is being gathered from other police departments in the region that have put the cameras into use. A presentation last month specifically addressed the practical and legal issues involved, particularly in DuPage County, he said.
“The presenter talked about how police officers frequently are in people’s homes,” Marshall said, noting that police regularly have contact with juveniles and others whose safety could be jeopardized by public release of incidents filmed in private settings.
Marshall also wants to hear from the residents about the question of body cameras. The topic came up, he said, at a recent session of the department’s Citizens’ Police Academy program. Marshall said some of the two dozen or so participants expressed concern about recordings made in their homes becoming available to anyone through the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
“That’s another thing that we have to sort out … would you like that out in the public?” he said.
Pradel, who will leave office when the newly elected City Council is sworn in May 3, also wants to know what the residents think.
“I think we should go to the public: Do you want your police officers to wear cameras or not?” he said.
Psychologists, law enforcement experts and Naperville’s own rank and file should be part of the conversation as well, the mayor said.
“What happened down there in South Carolina could happen anywhere,” he said. “But we also have to focus on how they’re going to use it.
“As a former police officer, I would say it’s coming down the pike, but we need to do a lot of research.”
As part of that process, privacy issues will be weighed against additional factors, including the potential deterrent value of the police-worn devices, for both perpetrator and responder. Former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, now a professor of criminal law at Georgetown, said use of a body camera in the South Carolina incident might have spared a life.
“They make both police and civilians treat each other better, because they know they are being recorded,” Butler said. “If the police officer knew he was on camera, he may have been deterred from firing his weapon at a fleeing suspect.”
Michael Thomas Slager, a white patrol officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, was relieved of his duties and charged with murder after he allegedly fired eight shots at 50-year-old Walter Scott, who is black. As part of the response to the fatal shooting, Mayor Keith Summey announced Wednesday that all of the city’s uniformed officers now will wear video recording devices while on duty.
Commenting on the video, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said “things moved quickly” on the officer’s arrest once the recording was made public.
The response presented a sharp contrast to the impact of other video accounts shot by witnesses in highly publicized fatal police encounters.
In 1991, a man standing on his balcony filmed the beating of black Los Angeles resident Rodney King by four club-wielding police officers who later were acquitted in a state trial. The U.S. Justice Department subsequently filed federal civil rights charges and won convictions against two of them.
And last July, New York City officers were filmed in a confrontation with shoplifting suspect Eric Garner, a 350-pound black man, who was put into a choke hold that a medical examiner implicated in Garner’s death during the incident. In the widely aired video, Garner could be heard repeating the phrase, “I can’t breathe,” as officers restrained him on the sidewalk.
Another explosive case last year, the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri, was not recorded, and some witness accounts contradicted one another. Grand juries in both the Garner case and the Ferguson shooting declined to indict the officers involved.
Marshall was shaken by the newest video.
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“I just found it rather appalling that the police officer, from what I saw in the video, shot an individual who was running away,” Marshall said. “Multiple times.”
Twitter @scarlman
Associated Press contributed.