Local police departments are resisting the feds' ban on body cameras on joint task forces

Andrew Wolfson
Courier Journal

Recognizing that body cameras protect both the public and police, the U.S. Department of Justice has provided at least $20 million to more than 100 law enforcement departments around the country — including Louisville's — to buy body cameras.

But that same Justice Department not only forbids its own agents in the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service from wearing body cameras, it also bans local police officers from using them when they serve on joint local-federal task forces.

And that is creating friction with some police departments.

In May, four months after an Atlanta police officer working on an FBI fugitive task force shot and killed a wanted but unarmed man, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the department was pulling out of joint task forces because of federal agencies' refusal to allow the use of body cameras.

Axon's next generation of body cams allow video to be live-streamed.

And in St. Paul, Minnesota, police Chief Todd Axtell wouldn't back down when the U.S. Marshals Service refused to allow police on its fugitive task force to use them.

"I told them all St. Paul officers must comply without our rules,” Axtell said in an interview. “Body cameras really help get to the truth.”

In response, the Marshals Service kicked four local police off the task force, he said.

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Chiefs in other cities, including Houston and Austin, are considering whether to pull their officers from task forces if they can’t reach a compromise with federal agencies, the Washington Post reported recently in the first story about the conflict.

Louisville Metro Police has 21 officers serving full or part time on federal task forces on violent crime, narcotics and public corruption.

Spokeswoman Jessie Halladay said conflict with the federal rule has not come into play yet because most of the LMPD officers assigned to the task forces work in major crimes or narcotics, so they do not wear body cameras in their regular duties on the department,

But she said Chief Steve Conrad is aware of the ongoing discussion in other cities and is monitoring it.

LMPD Chief Steve Conrad

Body cameras have played a prominent role in several high-profile cases involving Louisville police, helping to evaluate whether officers appropriately used deadly force and if they followed proper policy and procedure during traffic stops.

Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas said thousands of local police are continuing their work on task forces "as these discussions progress."

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A department official said federal agents don't use body cameras because of "operational safety and security concerns, such as protecting sensitive tactical methods used in arresting violent fugitives or conducting covert operations."

The official, who declined to be named, also cited concerns about the privacy of bystanders who might be present when a warrant is executed.

But two members of Congress in the Washington, D.C. area have introduced a bill to require federal agents to wear body cameras in the wake of a November 2017 fatal shooting in which U.S. Park Police killed an unarmed motorist in Fairfax County, Virginia.

That police force is part of the Interior Department, which also prohibits officers from using body cameras.

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Co-sponsor Don Beyer, D-Va., said, “Body cameras increase the transparency and public trust in law enforcement, and all federal police should wear them.”

There also was no video footage of a fatal shooting from June 12 in Memphis by deputy U.S. marshals of armed fugitive Brandon Webber, that triggered riots in which 35 local police were injured.

Shelby County Sheriff's deputies brace against the crowd as protesters take to the streets of the Frayser community in anger against the shooting a youth identified by family members as Brandon Webber by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, in Memphis, Tenn.

A Justice Department survey released in November showed that 47% of police and sheriff’s agencies in the U.S. had acquired body cameras as of 2016, a figure that likely has grown.

Axtell noted the irony that after helping local police acquire wearable body cameras, federal agencies do not practice what they’ve been preaching.

“I believe they have an obligation to join us in 21st-century policing,” he told the Post.

The Justice Department has another $18 million budgeted this year to help local departments acquire more cameras.

Louisville police began using “wearable video systems,” as it calls them, in 2015, when it acquired 988 of them.

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During the first year the body cameras were deployed, use-of-force incidents declined by 36% and complaints against officers also declined, according to a study by the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville.

Nationally, studies have found mixed results on whether cameras reduce the use of force, according to a March report in Governing Magazine.

But it said virtually all the studies have found they reduce the number of civilian complaints, either because officers know their conduct is being recorded — or because citizens know they will be exposed for filing bogus complaints.

Body camera footage is used mostly by prosecutors in court, to prove a defendant is guilty, the magazine found.

Louisville officers are required to use their body cameras to record all calls for service and arrests, citations, stops, consent searches and pursuits.

LMPD body cams allow officers to view but not edit video

One rule says officers will use their wearable video systems "when assisting other law enforcement or governmental agencies that are engaged in any official law enforcement activities."

But another rule says they shall not be used to record "activities of officers on federal task forces, at the request of the host agency."

The FBI long has lagged behind local law enforcement in using video technology.

Until 2014, it refused to allow agents to record interviews with suspects taken into custody. Instead, agents took handwritten notes, then produced a report summarizing the conversation.

Reversing a longstanding policy, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced that agents of the DEA, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Marshals Service would begin recording such interviews.

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.  Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/andreww.