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Police Body Camera Bill Moves To Full Council

P. Kenneth Burns
/
WYPR

A Baltimore City Council committee unanimously sent a proposal requiring police officers to wear body cameras to the full council Tuesday, despite warnings from city lawyers that the bill overstepped the council’s boundaries.

“We’re the legislative body of the City of Baltimore,” insisted City Council President Jack Young. "We’re elected by the citizens of Baltimore and were moving forward with this bill.”

Elena DiPietro, one of the city's chief solicitors, said in a report dated Oct. 23 that the proposal would violate state law and the city charter.  She cited state law that made 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.”

DiPietro told the committee her department “is in no way” opposed to police officers wearing body cameras.

“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,” she said.

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?”

Young wrote to state Attorney General Doug Gansler Tuesday, asking for a second opinion on his proposal.

Committee members also criticized City Budget Director Andrew Kleine who recommended the council wait for a task force assembled by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to finish its work before moving forward.

“We will have a better cost estimate when the task force does its work,” Kleine said.

Kleine said the start-up costs for the program range from $2.4 million to $3.4 million, based on reports from the Justice Department and the Oakland, Ca. police department, which Police Commissioner Anthony Batts commanded before he came to Maryland.

Warren 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.

Batts has long supported body cameras for officers.

Kevin Harris, the mayor's spokesman, says Rawlings-Blake is open to the bill and hopes it will be amended to address the concerns of city lawyers.

The full council gets a look at the bill November 10.