Erving Police Chief Chris Blair said that during his first day with a new body camera and a new policy making them mandatory for on-duty officers, an incident arose during which he was stoked to be so equipped.
While out on a call, Blair said he was trying to wrangle a person who was belligerent and giving him a hard time.
“The guy was just egging me on,” Blair said. “I just absolutely loved having the camera to back me up.”
Last Monday, the Erving Police Department became the first municipal department in Massachusetts to implement a policy making body cameras mandatory for its officers.
With violent incidents like those in Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York City, police use of force is coming under increased scrutiny and interest in body cameras for police officers continues to grow. As more departments consider deploying body cameras, digital storage issues and privacy concerns persist. And while the technology is rapidly improving — the cameras purchased by the Erving and Montague police departments over the summer yield high-definition images — the wearable cameras remain largely cost-prohibitive.
For Erving’s five new cameras, the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association awarded a $5,000 grant which covered the costs entirely. Montague Police Chief Charles Dodge said MIIA also funded his department’s five cameras at $895 apiece. Jeffrey Siena, loss control manager for MIIA, said any municipal body that purchases insurance through the association — the association covers 300 municipal bodies in the commonwealth — are eligible to apply for the $5,000 grants. Siena said the grants are targeted at addressing any number of safety issues within a community.
Blair said body cameras for him were a no-brainer. He said when he came on 11 years ago, the department was getting complaints about officer conduct. He said when MIIA donated funds for cruiser cams that year, the videos often vindicated officers, but he also witnessed some issues that needed to be addressed. Overall, the complaints dissipated.
Having the cameras on all the time also sets the behavioral tone, Blair said. “The officer’s going to behave better and the public is going to behave better.”
But Vanessa Lynch, co-founder of the local Black Lives Matter chapter, has her doubts. She said that while she’s not against body cameras, she doesn’t believe they’ll stem violence. She points to cases like Eric Garner’s — whose death by police in NYC was caught on camera — as evidence that having police violence on film doesn’t always yield justice and can serve to traumatize the black community by sending the death into a seemingly endless video loop on TV and the Internet. She also said that any extra money should go toward community development and not law enforcement.
As more officers use the devices, the concern is that lawsuits against law enforcement agencies will crop up alleging illegal wiretapping via body cams. Privacy is also a major concern, Blair said, as police officers often go inside people’s homes and deal with the public in vulnerable situations. If the camera is rolling in such scenarios, then it presents a concern over how departments should release the footage through public records requests.
How will they decide what is too sensitive for release? There need to be exemptions to the state’s public records law, he said. “We have to be really careful about that,” he said.
Blair said he sees that Massachusetts legislators are working on these issues. He said wiretapping laws in the state dictate that everyone has a right to be informed that they’re being recorded.
Being at the forefront of the issue has its disadvantages, Blair said. When developing his department’s policy, he said, there were few models he could refer to. He surveyed departments in Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Essex County Sheriff’s Department.
“I had to utilize these other policies to make a policy that would fit,” Blair said, adding that simple things like putting a camera into a winter coat for the first time and what to do when it’s pouring rain are things that he didn’t even think about until last week.
In other departments near you
Chief Dodge in Montague said his department received five body cameras in August, but he won’t be making them mandatory for officers any time soon. He said that in negotiations with the union, one of the agreements was that cameras wouldn’t be mandatory until privacy issues have been worked out.
“They’re being cautious because they don’t want to get themselves in a situation where someone might be requesting certain records,” Dodge said. “Though there’s a lot of great intentions in wearing these, it could turn around on us.”
Gill Police Sergeant Chris Redmond said his department has one camera that was purchased for the purpose of experimentation. Sgt. John Delaney with the Springfield Police Department said the city is interested in body cameras, but cost is a major issue. A $5,000 grant, he said “wouldn’t even put a dent” in what it would cost for their much larger police force. Northampton Police Chief Jody Kasper also cited substantial costs — $90,000 for five years’ worth of use, then additional costs for storage after that — and the same privacy concerns as Blair as reasons Northampton hasn’t gotten any cameras.
“The future of policing likely includes individual body cameras for patrol personnel, but we need to move forward with this technology thoughtfully,” Kasper wrote in an email to the Advocate. “We’re keeping an eye on this topic and are interested to see how it develops.”•
Contact Amanda Drane at adrane@valleyadvocate.com .
