A report of a petty theft crackles over Officer Random Johnson’s police radio, and he flips on his overhead lights.
Just as he toes the accelerator, a prolonged chirp informs him that three cell phone-sized cartridges in his squad car are burning high-definition views of his every move onto a video record, to be accessible in a few hours by higher-ranking cops at the Evanston Police Department.
The sound, from a body-worn camera system that every officer in the department has been equipped with since January, is a comfort to Johnson, he said.
“It’s sort of like a guardian angel, always watching,” said Johnson, a sworn officer since 2013.
After more than 90 days into the rollout of the body camera program, the Evanston Review did a ride-along with Johnson in April.
While police had long used dashboard cameras in their patrol cars, the city of Evanston bought the body cameras from the Scottsdale, Ariz. based-Axon Enterprise Inc. last year in an effort to hold police more accountable, officials said.
“Nationwide, the use of body-worn cameras have become a best practice for police departments. Law enforcement agencies are using body-worn cameras in different ways, including improvements in evidence collection, strengthening of officer performance and accountability, enhancing transparency, better documentation during encounters between the police and the public and to assist in the investigation of complaints,” Evanston police said in a January news release announcing the start of officers wearing the devices.
Some say it would help accusers in claims of police misconduct. But it holds the accusers accountable too, Johnson said.
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“It alleviates that fear that someone will make a false accusation against you, when otherwise it’s just their story against yours,” he said.
Evanston police in September 2017 threw full support behind the City Council’s 8-0 vote to pay $1.1 million for the cameras. By February of this year, every patrol officer in the city — including Johnson — had been trained and equipped to use them.
So far, police Chief Richard Eddington says he feels the use of body cameras is going well for the department.
The video recording system that police have with them on patrol includes three cameras. One, mounted on inside windshield, records everything the officer sees in front of him. Another faces backward through a glass partition into the back seat, and a third is clipped to the officer’s chest.
The three cameras are always recording, but any time they’re activated, they begin saving information onto the chest-worn camera, Johnson explained.
At the end of each shift, officers are required to plug the camera back into a docking station at Evanston police station, where the saved videos are uploaded onto an evidence drive.
Certain outside events trigger the cameras automatically, like an officer toggling a siren or another body camera being activated nearby, Johnson said.
But department policy also allows cops to manually wake up the cameras any time they want, as long as they inform anyone who’s being recorded that the camera is rolling.
The saved recording reaches back 30 seconds before the cameras are triggered, a feature that came in handy when Johnson saw a driver pull a left turn on a red light in front of him, he said.
“With something like that, it’s so quick that you’re not going to have time to capture it in the moment,” he said. “It’s a nice feeling, because it means we’re covered for those things we’re not necessarily prepared for.”
If the motorist wanted to challenge Johnson’s citation, the officer would be able to show video of the entire incident to a judge in traffic court, according to department policy. If the driver wanted to see the video, it could be shown to them privately.
Evanston is among a growing number of Illinois towns that have been springing for the body cameras since 2015, when state lawmakers responded to a national outcry for greater police accountability by passing a law that outlines rules and guidelines for the new technology.
The cameras can show any number of police actions, from traffic stops to incidents where officers draw their weapons, and more.
Local activist groups like Evanston Collective have led the call for tighter checks on the city’s cops, and many see the implementation of body cameras as an important step, according to Evanston Collective co-founder Bobby Burns.
“I do believe that in a lot of cases, [body camera use] can empower residents making complaints. Like, If you get stopped and searched, you can actually make it clear whether that stop was warranted in the first place,” said Burns.
Still, Burns added, newly-written state and local policies leave gaping questions over when the cameras can be used, and who gets to access the resulting footage.
Further, he said, state law only compels police to make footage public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and only if the identity of every non-consenting person caught on video is concealed.
But Eddington cautioned that state laws governing police body cameras are “way more complex than that.”
Alex Nitkin is a freelancer.
Pioneer Press staff reporter Genevieve Bookwalter contributed to this report.