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City Hall Notebook: Police Body Cameras: Only The Beginning

P. Kenneth Burns
/
WYPR

After months of work, a task force appointed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake released Wednesday recommendations for implementing a police body camera program.

Among its recommendations, the panel said police should have the cameras rolling during every encounter with civilians, that officers should tell citizens the camera is recording as soon as they can and that footage should be stored for four years.

The panel also recommended using 100 officers for a six-month pilot program, estimated to cost $1.4 million. Estimates of the total cost of the program in the first year range between $5.5 million and $7.9 million, depending on the type of cameras and the number of officers wearing them.

The 42-page report is available on the mayor's website.  The city will take public comments through March 6.

Rawlings-Blake said Baltimore's program will be successful in part because the panel was smart and thoughtful in addressing the issues.

"If you take at look at the individuals [on the panel,] you know that these are people who have a whole lot of differences but came together to make sure we got this right," she said. "And I think it's because of their hard work we're put in a much better position as a city."

Members of the panel came from neighborhood and civil rights groups, law enforcement and government.

James Benjamin, co-chair of the work group, said the panel had lively discussions. "But given the high stakes involved it was absolutely critical that these issues be thoroughly reviewed by a broad cross section of professionals."

There are still several issues that need to be resolved.  Among them; rules for recording officers responding to reports of sexual assaults or interviewing crime victims inside a hospital room, where privacy rules come into play. The panel also did not address whether the State's Attorney's Office should have direct access to camera footage.

Release of the recommendations is the latest chapter in outfitting Baltimore Police officers with cameras.  Community activists called for police body cameras after Baltimore's own high profile police-custody deaths like Anthony Anderson and Tyrone West.

City Council President Jack Young and Councilman Warren Branch introduced a bill last September requiring officers to wear body cameras.  Rawlings-Blake announced a work group to come up with recommendations for a body camera program a month later.

Elena DiPietro, one of the city's chief solicitors in the Law Department, and the mayor’s budget chief, Andrew Kleine, came under heavy criticism during a city council committee hearing in October.

DiPietro said in a report that Young and Branch's bill would violate state law and the city charter.  She cited state law that makes the police department a state agency and a section of the city charter that says neither the council nor the mayor can “conflict, impede, obstruct, hinder or interfere with the powers of the Police Commissioner.”

Kleine recommended that the council wait until the work group's findings are released before moving the bill forward.

“We are just trying to be consistent with our advice regarding the processes that are allowed under our city charter, public local law and city code provisions,” DiPietro said during the hearing.

But Young dismissed her recommendations.

“The Law Department’s position is not the position of scholars who have already spoken to us about this law; you can interpret this law any kind of way you want to,” he said.

Councilman Jim Kraft, the council’s only member who is a lawyer, asked DiPietro how laws that called for the commissioner to take action against public nuisances and firearms, for example, are different from the body camera proposal.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Kraft said, “If these laws are not enforceable, then why is your department and this administration allowing the city council to pass these laws and not pointing this out before?”

Branch, the committee’s chairman, scolded Kleine for not asking Batts how he implemented body cameras in Oakland.

“You’re sitting with an expert who’s commanding that staff; who helped implement them in California,” he said.

The council's bill passed, but Rawlings-Blake vetoed it. She said the bill was "not even thoughtful" and that the council "didn't take the time to get it right."

With the drama over, the city now starts putting the pieces into place. 

The pilot program will go through the city's normal procurement process. That takes an average of six months from the time the city releases a purchase request until it picks a vendor.

Officials anticipate a pilot program could start by November at the earliest.

Young and Branch were briefed on the recommendations before the mayor's announcement.  Branch said the mayor is moving in the right direction.

"I would have loved to see the [program implemented] during the summer but its good," he said.