Here’s How Police Could End Up Making Body Cameras Mostly Useless

Moments before he died, Charly Keunang took a swing at a cop. This was­n’t an ordi­nary jab or hook. In cell phone video filmed by a bystander in March, the 43-year-old home­less man can be seen spin­ning toward a group of Los Angeles police offi­cers, arms flail­ing. He looks more like the Tasmanian Devil than Mike Tyson. The whirl­wind attack lasts a few sec­onds, and then ends just as quick­ly as it began. Keunang, a Cameroonian immi­grant who was known as “Africa” on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, careens wild­ly into the incom­ing fist of one of the offi­cers. The cop punch­es Keunang in the face and takes him to the ground, where the scuf­fle con­tin­ues. “Stop resist­ing,” offi­cers yell as they try to sub­due Keunang. Four offi­cers blan­ket him, and you can hear the sound of one of their stun guns click­ing. “He has my gun. He has my gun,” screams one. The offi­cers then open fire. An autop­sy lat­er shows that two bul­lets struck Keunang in the chest at close range. Two entered else­where on his tor­so, and two hit his left arm. Keunang was pro­nounced dead at the scene, his name among at least 61 unarmed black men killed by police this year, accord­ing to a data­base com­piled by The Guardian.

The eye­wit­ness video of Keunang’s death went viral, spark­ing protests from Angelenos who argued the shoot­ing was fur­ther proof that the city’s police depart­ment should over­haul its use of force pol­i­cy and rethink its approach to deal­ing with the men­tal­ly ill. More than 1,000peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es are esti­mat­ed to live on the streets of Skid Row, an expanse of down­town Los Angeles that has one of the nation’s biggest pop­u­la­tions of home­less peo­ple liv­ing on the streets. Tensions between police and civil­ians in the area run high.

As the pub­lic search­es for answers about what hap­pened on that after­noon in March, a new set of con­cerns has emerged about police offi­cers’ use of body cam­eras — and how, or if, the devices will pro­mote account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy if the poli­cies that gov­ern the footage are over­ly restric­tive. Two of the offi­cers involved in Keunang’s killing were equipped with body cam­eras that were record­ing dur­ing the episode. Although inves­ti­ga­tors have that footage in their pos­ses­sion, the LAPD has not pub­licly released it. Under recent­ly adopt­ed pol­i­cy, the depart­ment like­ly won’t release the videos unless it’s com­pelled to do so in a crim­i­nal or civ­il court pro­ceed­ing. Without the body cam­era footage, a num­ber of ques­tions linger. What hap­pened before the con­fronta­tion became phys­i­cal? Could offi­cers have done a bet­ter job of de-esca­lat­ing? Does the body cam­era video pro­vide a clear­er pic­ture of how and why offi­cers resort­ed to dead­ly force?

The exist­ing bystander footage has pro­vid­ed lit­tle con­clu­sive evi­dence. LAPD offi­cials have claimed the most-watched video shows Keunang grab­bing an offi­cer’s firearm dur­ing the strug­gle, caus­ing the offi­cer to fear for his life. More than sev­en months lat­er, the Los Angeles County dis­trict attor­ney, Jackie Lacey, has­n’t announced whether charges will be filed against any of the offi­cers. To com­pli­cate mat­ters fur­ther, the few jour­nal­ists who have seen the body cam­era footage say it chal­lenges the offi­cial police account and calls the depart­men­t’s tac­tics into ques­tion. At GQ,Jeff Sharlet wrote that the video nev­er shows Keunang gain con­trol of the offi­cer’s weapon. Gale Holland and Richard Winton of the Los Angeles Times report­ed that offi­cers repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to use a Taser on Keunang before he got vio­lent, while he was try­ing to talk with them. It’s unclear if the body cam­era videos will affect the deci­sion about whether to charge the offi­cers in Keunang’s death. If the LAPD gets its way and the footage is not released, the pub­lic will be asked to trust that Lacey made her deci­sion cor­rect­ly and impar­tial­ly. In oth­er words, the pres­ence of body cam­eras will have changed very lit­tle in this case, at least outwardly.

With more and more police depart­ments begin­ning to adopt offi­cer-worn cam­era tech­nol­o­gy, Keunang’s death and its after­math should serve as a warn­ing. When the White House announced a $75 mil­lion ini­tia­tive last year to expand body cam­era pro­grams around the nation, it said the devices would help “build and sus­tain trust between com­mu­ni­ties and those who serve and pro­tect these com­mu­ni­ties.” But the equip­ment can only achieve this goal if the poli­cies gov­ern­ing the use of body cam­eras and dis­clo­sure of the footage don’t get in the way. Critics say the LAPD’s body cam­era pol­i­cy is prob­lem­at­ic because it allows the depart­ment to with­hold its footage from the pub­lic, it requires offi­cers to review footage before they write police reports, it does­n’t lay out clear pun­ish­ment for offi­cers who fail to turn on their cam­eras dur­ing crit­i­cal inci­dents, and it does­n’t pro­vide clear pri­va­cy pro­tec­tions to lim­it pub­lic sur­veil­lance. This is a trou­bling list of com­plaints. But at their core is an essen­tial prob­lem: Giving police the pow­er to block the release of body cam­era footage deprives the pub­lic of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter for­mu­late an opin­ion about police tac­tics and to push back with facts, should com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers find an offi­cer’s actions to be inap­pro­pri­ate. In many places, bad body cam­era pol­i­cy is threat­en­ing to under­cut pub­lic demands for account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy before pro­grams even get off the ground.
Here are a few sce­nar­ios to look out for.

Your community might not get to decide whether it wants police to use body cameras in the first place.

Before civil­ians weigh in on how body cam­era pro­grams should work, they need to decide if they want police to have the devices at all. People are already being left out of this most basic deci­sion-mak­ing process, says Nadia Kayyali, an activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non­prof­it that focus­es on dig­i­tal rights and technology.

“Where body cams are being adopt­ed, it’s real­ly impor­tant that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers — par­tic­u­lar­ly those who come from the com­mu­ni­ties that are most affect­ed by police account­abil­i­ty issues — need to be involved in that deci­sion. They need to have a dis­cus­sion,” Kayyali said. “And what we’re already see­ing is that instead, law enforce­ment agen­cies are apply­ing for this mon­ey with­out that dis­cus­sion.” Last month, the Justice Department announced grants to help 73 local and trib­al agen­cies in 32 states expand their body cam­era pro­grams. Many oth­er cities and towns had already start­ed to do so, though a num­ber of major met­ro­pol­i­tan police forces have been slow­er to move, often due to dis­putes over the costs of equip­ment and data stor­age, as well as resis­tance­from police offi­cers themselves.

But while many depart­ments have either begun equip­ping offi­cers with body cam­eras or have out­lined plans to begin the process, most of them have not yet released offi­cial guide­lines on how the cam­eras will be used. Some depart­ments are in the process of draft­ing pol­i­cy for the use of body cam­eras. Others are wait­ing for pilot pro­grams to con­clude before mov­ing for­ward. Activists and police offi­cials reg­u­lar­ly tout the acqui­si­tion of body cam­eras as a key step toward reform, but many peo­ple are still skep­ti­cal, believ­ing the devices could fail to prompt mean­ing­ful change and even make cer­tain issues worse. “There is con­cern that body cam­eras can be mis­used, are going to pro­vide more ammu­ni­tion in court for pros­e­cu­tion, rather than account­abil­i­ty for law enforce­ment them­selves,” said Kayyali. “There is con­cern that they are real­ly cre­at­ing per­va­sive surveillance.”

Your community might not be included in the policy-making process.

Even if res­i­dents agree that police should be equipped with body cam­eras, they most like­ly won’t get final say over the poli­cies that will ulti­mate­ly deter­mine how effec­tive the pro­grams can be. A coali­tion of more than 30 groups, includ­ing the American Civil Liberties Union and the EFF,signed a let­ter in May that out­lined a set of body cam­era prin­ci­ples for depart­ments to con­sid­er. First among them: “Develop cam­era poli­cies in pub­lic with the input of civ­il rights advo­cates and the local com­mu­ni­ty.” Many depart­ments have tak­en this advice to heart, at least in the­o­ry, by hold­ing lis­ten­ing ses­sions and seek­ing pub­lic input about body cam­eras. But just because they’re ask­ing peo­ple to sub­mit rec­om­men­da­tions does­n’t mean they’re actu­al­ly includ­ing them in the result­ing poli­cies. Cities like Los Angeles have already come under fire for not allow­ing suf­fi­cient pub­lic input before draft­ing poli­cies, and for putting forth pro­pos­als that crit­ics say have failed to incor­po­rate civil­ian pri­or­i­ties. In September, the ACLU sug­gest­ed that the Justice Department should deny fed­er­al grant mon­ey to Los Angeles due to defi­cien­cies in its body cam­era pol­i­cy. But the LAPD end­ed up receiv­ing a $1 mil­lion grant, putting it among the top fund­ing recipients.

Police could make it difficult or impossible for the public to access critical body camera footage.

This is the biggest con­cern for civ­il rights groups and the pub­lic, who have pushed for the adop­tion of body cam­eras large­ly in the belief that they can make police more trans­par­ent and account­able. But in some places, law enforce­ment is already severe­ly restrict­ing the footage it will release pub­licly. In Los Angeles, for exam­ple, body cam­era footage is explic­it­ly exempt­ed from pub­lic records laws. The chief of police can decide to release video as he or she sees fit. The District of Columbia is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing a pro­pos­al not to pub­licly release body cam­era footage if there are pend­ing crim­i­nal charges against a sus­pect or an offi­cer. In mat­ters of great pub­lic inter­est, how­ev­er, the may­or would have the author­i­ty to decide whether or not to unseal relat­ed video. This pol­i­cy was sug­gest­ed after Mayor Muriel Bowser attempt­ed ear­li­er this year to make all body cam­era footage exempt from pub­lic records requests.

In Las Vegas, which has tak­en a more open stance on body cam­era footage, police will be allowed to with­hold video per­tain­ing to ongo­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions or inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. While this may make sense in some cas­es, many of the most con­tro­ver­sial inci­dents — shoot­ings, in-cus­tody deaths, use of force com­plaints — typ­i­cal­ly result in these types of probes, mean­ing police could use this pro­vi­sion to sup­press the major­i­ty of con­se­quen­tial footage until after the inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­plet­ed. Together, such mea­sures have the effect of pre­serv­ing the exist­ing sys­tem, in which the pub­lic must sim­ply trust that law enforce­ment will prop­er­ly resolve any issues with­out exter­nal over­sight. That’s not help­ful. “If you’re using body cam­eras for account­abil­i­ty, you can’t then depend on police dis­cre­tion for the footage to be used for that pur­pose,” said Kayyali.

Police may end up using the footage only for their own benefit.

Another emerg­ing point of con­tention is whether offi­cers will be allowed to view record­ed footage before fil­ing their reports or mak­ing state­ments about an inci­dent. Law enforce­ment offi­cials in a num­ber of cities, includ­ing San Francisco, San Diego andDenver, have said their offi­cers should be able to do so. A Justice Department report on body cam­eras released in 2014 sup­ports this prac­tice, claim­ing it will help ensure accu­ra­cy, though as The Washington Post recent­ly report­ed, the direc­tor of the group that authored the report has since changed his mind. In Los Angeles, any offi­cer accused of exces­sive use of force or grave mis­con­duct will be required to review rel­e­vant body cam­era footage before giv­ing any state­ment to inves­ti­ga­tors. Civil rights groups like the ACLU, how­ev­er, see this as a move that will taint the inves­tiga­tive process before it begins and pro­tect offi­cers from poten­tial reper­cus­sions for misconduct.

“It will allow offi­cers to lie and tai­lor their sto­ries to the video,” said Jay Stanley, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the ACLU’s speech, pri­va­cy and tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram. “But even for most offi­cers who don’t lie, video is not an objec­tive record, and even mem­o­ry is not an objec­tive record. The offi­cer might see things or expe­ri­ence things the video does­n’t cap­ture, depend­ing on light­ing, cam­era angle, when the video was turned on or turned off.” Beyond that, there’s the more basic mat­ter of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. A civil­ian under police inves­ti­ga­tion would not get to review an offi­cer’s body cam­era footage before being ques­tioned. Some argue that police deserve cer­tain priv­i­leges in the legal process, but Stanley says that if the goal is equal jus­tice under the law — even for the law — this should­n’t be one of the ben­e­fits. “An inves­ti­ga­tion is sup­posed to be a search for truth. The fam­i­lies of a per­son who’s been shot or beat up, they deserve the truth,” he said. “This is not a pol­i­cy that will yield truth most accurately.”

Officers may not face significant punishment for failing to enable cameras or for disabling them.

While police are push­ing for a vari­ety of mea­sures that may end up mak­ing body cam­eras less help­ful to the pub­lic, the equip­ment is com­plete­ly use­less if it’s not being used prop­er­ly in the first place. To make sure that offi­cers can’t sim­ply snuff out evi­dence of mis­con­duct by switch­ing cam­eras off or by tam­per­ing with footage after it’s record­ed, the coali­tion of civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions rec­om­mends that depart­ments out­line clear poli­cies about when and where offi­cers must turn body cam­eras on, and enforce strict dis­ci­pli­nary pro­to­cols for any vio­la­tions. Many depart­ments have estab­lished spe­cif­ic guide­lines to deter­mine which kinds of inter­ac­tions with civil­ians should be record­ed, but the pun­ish­ment for fail­ing to fol­low pol­i­cy may not fit most peo­ple’s def­i­n­i­tion of “strict.” In Los Angeles, the city’s body cam­era pol­i­cy does­n’t lay out spe­cif­ic sanc­tions for an offi­cer who fails to acti­vate the device, though it does say that any tam­per­ing with the footage will be “con­sid­ered seri­ous mis­con­duct and sub­ject to dis­ci­pli­nary action.”

In oth­er cities, the dis­ci­pli­nary response is less vague. In Denver, the first fail­ure to adhere to body cam­era record­ing require­ments in a 12-month peri­od will result in a writ­ten rep­ri­mand. A sec­ond vio­la­tion in the same peri­od means will result in the offi­cer being fined a day’s pay and sub­ject­ed to an in-depth audit of his or her body cam­era use. A third vio­la­tion will trig­ger a for­mal dis­ci­pli­nary case, while “pur­pose­ful, fla­grant or repeat­ed vio­la­tions will result in more severe dis­ci­pli­nary action.” It’s not clear what lev­el of dis­ci­pline is nec­es­sary to ensure that offi­cers are com­pli­ant with body cam­era pro­grams, but there’s rea­son to believe they’ll need some pres­sure. Over the years, we’ve seen a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sial inci­dents in which dash­board or sur­veil­lance cam­eras sup­pos­ed­ly “mal­func­tioned” at crit­i­cal moments. Important footage has also sim­ply gone “miss­ing,” mak­ing it impos­si­ble to prove alle­ga­tions of misconduct.

And in the past year, there have been at least a few instances of offi­cers not acti­vat­ing body cam­eras before fatal encoun­ters. Pilot pro­grams have pro­vid­ed some insight into how this prob­lem could play out when more offi­cers are equipped with body cam­eras. In Denver, an inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor’s review found that over six months, many offi­cers failed to record inci­dents in which they used force. At the time of the report in March, police offi­cials dis­put­ed the find­ings and refused to clar­i­fy if those fail­ures were a result of pol­i­cy vio­la­tions or faulty equipment.