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NEW BEDFORD — You might have noticed a new piece of equipment on some of the city’s police officers: a body camera.
Last week, the department started training and equipping officers with the device, which police have used for years elsewhere in the state and country. All sworn officers will get a camera and are expected to have them in recording mode when interacting with the public (with some exceptions).
As part of this rollout, the department has also finalized its body-worn camera policy. It allows officers to view footage of shootings in which they are involved before issuing statements or filing reports.
That position aligns with other area police department’s policies. But it goes against the recommendation of a national policing organization: that officers view footage after providing statements to ensure accountability.
Citizens can obtain body-camera footage through public records requests, and will have the limited right to ask police to turn their cameras off during a conversation.
The policy
When officers should review their body camera footage remains a debated subject among advocates, legal experts and law enforcement officials. Just last year, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) updated its recommendations on the issue, stating officers involved in a “critical incident” (shooting or another use of force) should not watch any related footage before making their initial statement.
“The reasons for this recommendation change … are grounded in fairness, science, and the law,” wrote PERF.
Critics are concerned that officers will consciously or subconsciously tailor their reports to what the camera shows in order to support their narrative, possibly undermining the credibility and integrity of their statements.
What you should know
- You have the right to ask a police officer to stop recording with their body camera; they can use their discretion to refuse this request and continue recording.
- You can obtain body camera footage by filing a public records request with the city.
- Officers should wear their body cameras in plain view, and should inform an individual when they are being recorded, when feasible.
- If you are a victim of a crime or reporting a crime and an officer records it, that recording or aspects of it may be redacted or remain exempt from public disclosure.
- Officers are required to note in their reports any time they fail to record an incident, delay recording, or stop recording before the incident has ended.
According to the department’s 12-page policy, officers involved in a shooting or death may ”review their BWC recording related to the incident prior to completing and submitting any required reports and/or being interviewed by the appropriate investigative unit.” Officers are only prohibited from viewing the footage before it is uploaded to the server.
“BWC video footage should not replace an officer’s memories of the incident and the officer should base their statement on their memories, not solely on the video,” the new policy states.
Police Chief Paul Oliveira defended the new policy in an interview with the Light.
“Officers are able to view the video under all other instances,” Oliveira said late last week. “The body camera is an evidence tool for the profession. … The officer can go back and look at that and write an accurate report.”
Oliveira pointed to another organization, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which disagrees with PERF. It takes the position that officers should be permitted to review recordings before they are required to give a statement on a critical incident, stating human memory is fallible.
“PERF was one train of thought,” Oliveira said, adding the Major Cities organization thinks PERF “got it wrong.”
Local departments, including Fall River, Westport, and Boston, have either encouraged or permitted review of footage before officers file their reports for critical incidents, The Light previously reported, with some policies citing “accuracy” as the reason.
Officers in Dartmouth and Worcester, in contrast, must issue a statement before reviewing the footage — policies in line with PERF’s recommendations.
Under New Bedford’s policy, officers are required to document the existence of recordings in the reports they file. They are also required to document in writing any time the camera was off during an incident.
For instance, they will have to explain in writing when they do not activate or delay activating the camera, when they deactivate the camera before a response is finished, and when the camera malfunctions.
If an officer is delayed in pressing the record button, the camera has a 30-second buffer of video that can be retrieved, though it will lack audio.
Victims and witnesses can ask officers to deactivate the camera when speaking to police, though officers can use their discretion and continue recording “based on a legitimate public safety concern.” Officers will have to document this as well.
Assistant Deputy Chief Derek Belong, who is the body camera program coordinator, said the cameras are connected to officers’ tasers via bluetooth, so if an officer removes their taser from the holster during a confrontation, it will automatically connect with the camera to record.
The cameras can be connected in the same way with firearms, but Oliveira and Belong said the department does not have that feature at the time. Oliveira said they’d consider it, but that right now they are focusing on getting the program rolled out.
The cameras and their recordings will not be connected to facial recognition software, a position in line with recommendations by civil rights organizations including the ACLU of Massachusetts.
They do have a stealth mode option, which switches the camera lights off when it is recording. Belong explained this helps protect officers when they are searching for a suspect in a dark place who may be armed or dangerous. The policy dictates officers may use this mode “when it is reasonable for officer safety.”
To ensure compliance with the policy, the Professional Standards Division (which conducts internal affairs investigations into officer misconduct) will review one to three randomly selected recordings four times a year for each officer.
Under this audit, minor policy violations that the division views in the recordings will not result in discipline, but more egregious misconduct captured in the recordings (excessive force, racial bias, or negligence, for example) and criminal conduct may result in discipline.
Places officers will not wear the camera — or will have it turned off — include restrooms, locker rooms, and police department spaces that aren’t accessible to the public.
The policy requires officers to have their camera in the “on/buffering” mode when they are driving police department vehicles with municipal plates. This part of the policy seemingly excludes the narcotics officers; Oliveira confirmed that narcotics detectives would not drive vehicles with municipal plates.
Your rights
Body cameras, when used consistently and correctly, can provide accountability and account for privacy rights.
New Bedford officers are expected to notify people that they are being recorded “whenever reasonably practicable,” the policy states.
Massachusetts is a two-party consent state, meaning both parties must consent (whether implicitly or explicitly) to being recorded.
“Massachusetts law prohibits any individual, including a police officer, from surreptitiously or secretly recording any conversation in which any party to the conversation has a reasonable belief that the conversation is private or confidential,” the department’s policy states.
Sophia Hall, an attorney and the deputy litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights, said state law has a sort of carve-out for body cameras, in that a person knows they are being recorded if the recording device is in an open and obvious place.
“That’s why placement of body-worn cameras is really important,” she said.
As such, police officers must wear the cameras in a visible location (most often at the center of the chest).
A person who is a victim of a crime or who is reporting a crime can ask an officer to turn off his or her camera when speaking with them, including if the officer is in one’s home.
“Your right to privacy and fourth amendment right to be free of searches, particularly in your home, still exist,” Hall said.
If the officer refuses, one has the right in Massachusetts to request an officer’s badge number, Hall said: “I think it's really important that we create paper trails to ensure good behavior and consistency around accountability of these body-worn cameras.”
While Hall said she believes officers should not be recording victims, she acknowledged some policies allow officers the discretion to continue recording. This includes New Bedford’s policy, which states officers can keep recording if they have safety concerns.
“You also have a choice to not move forward with a report, or request someone else take the report,” Hall said. “It’s also possible that some of the privacy exemptions to public records law may kick in … and might be exempt from public record.”
Anyone can request body camera footage by filing public records requests, but some recordings will only be kept for a limited period. This is especially relevant for body camera footage storage, which is the most expensive part of a program, due to the amount of space that’s needed.
Footage may be withheld in part (through redactions), however, to protect an individual’s privacy.
The city’s policy accounts for this: “Recordings that unreasonably violate a person's privacy or sense of dignity should not be publicly released unless disclosure is required by law, order of the court, or they can be adequately redacted.”
Under state law, agencies must only preserve records for a certain amount of time.
Footage could be kept one year to indefinitely, depending on what the recording captures and whether it is part of a traffic stop, an internal investigation or a homicide investigation.
State police, for example, are required to keep recordings for death investigations indefinitely, use of force incidents for 10 years, and traffic stops for three years.
Per the New Bedford policy, recordings that are not related to a court proceeding or ongoing criminal investigation should not be kept for more than 30 months. For other cases, the department defers to the state’s municipal records schedule.
Oliveira said cameras are everywhere in the public space these days, and that he does not think it is “breaking news” for officers in the community to now be equipped with them.
The policy is finalized, but can be changed. Oliveira stated he will chat with officers in coming weeks to get feedback about possible changes or improvements.
The department expects all officers will be trained and equipped with the devices by mid-October.
“At the end of the day, body-worn cameras are supposed to be tools that expand accountability,” Hall said. “They’re supposed to be a benefit to the citizen when police officers are not complying, and they’re supposed to be a benefit to police officers to demonstrate when they are doing their job well as they have evidence to counter any complaint.”
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
It’s reassuring that the officers will now have real protections against fraudulent accusations of misconduct. Fabricated complaints have been weaponized against officers from the public as well from deep within department itself and has been used as a tactic of internal retaliation, defamation, and civil conspiracy.
It is reassuring that the public will now have real protections against fraudulent accusations by the police. Fabricated complaints have been weaponized against the public by officers as well as from deep within the department and has been used as tactic of retaliation, defamation, and civil conspiracy against we the people.
Cops are as scummy as we the people.
If the officer can review the film before making the report this only help the officer to put down what is on the film not what happen in the field. This only is a way to protect the officer not the civilian in the street. Why can’t New Bedford follow the law of Tran parity?
If only we had these when Hugh Dunn was arrested.
The cops would have turned their cameras off.