Starting in April, all Davis police officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras, joining a growing number of law-enforcement agencies that are using the devices to record officers’ interactions with the public.
“It’s a great evidence-gathering tool for us,” Lt. Tom Waltz said of the new technology. “It’s also another level of transparency. In situations where there’s a dispute about what occurred, we have a recording of it.”
Department policy calls for the cameras to be activated during arrests and detentions, uses of force, confrontational interactions, vehicle and foot pursuits, suspect interrogations, victim and witness interviews, searches and forced entries.
The policy also restricts the cameras’ use during sensitive situations such as medical or psychological evaluations, encounters with juveniles, or in places where citizens have a heightened expectation of privacy, such as restrooms.
According to Waltz, officers are prohibited from alerting or deleting the videos, which will be downloaded onto a server following each shift — or immediately, in the event of a critical incident such as a use of force. They will, however, be permitted to view the records before giving a statement or preparing a written report.
Public debate over the benefits of body-worn cameras has heightened in recent years following several controversial police use-of-force incidents, including the August 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Even President Barack Obama joined the conversation, urging law-enforcement agencies across the country to issue body cameras to their officers and later offering $20 million in federal grants to help fulfill that goal.
The Davis Police Department is covering its nearly $100,000 camera program with public safety realignment funding made available as a result of AB 109, according to Waltz.
Davis police began using patrol-car cameras — also known as “dash cams” — in 1995, starting with cars used for traffic stops and eventually installing them in the department’s entire fleet of patrol vehicles.
However, “while in-car cameras are now used by a majority of law-enforcement agencies across the country, it has become clear that they do not record a majority of the interactions officers have with the public because many incidents do not occur near patrol cars,” Police Chief Darren Pytel wrote in a staff report about the camera program that will appear on the City Council’s consent agenda this week.
After field-testing several camera models since early 2014, the department opted for the WatchGuard Vista model, roughly the size of a GoPro camera that attaches to a magnetic plate through an officer’s shirt or utility vest.
It was selected for its durability, ease of use and 160-degree camera angles, as well as the potential for eventually linking the system to the department’s patrol-car cameras, Lt. Glenn Glasgow said.
Of the four or five models that got a trial run, “this one got the highest marks from the officers,” said Glasgow, who oversaw the testings.
Sgt. Mike Munoz, member-at-large of the Davis Police Officers Association, said the general consensus among officers is the cameras will be a positive addition to the force.
“It seems like the public’s trust of law enforcement is sliding downhill, and hopefully this will help with that issue,” he said. “They’re also good in that they’ll make a lot of unfounded (citizen) complaints easier to investigate.”
But Munoz also cautioned that the cameras aren’t likely to reflect the totality of an incident or encounter.
“It may not capture all the sounds, and it doesn’t have the peripheral vision that we have,” and the cameras may get knocked off in the event of a struggle, he said.
Glasgow said officers will undergo a three-step online, hands-on and policy training process to familiarize themselves with the cameras before using them out in the field, with the goal of having all officers fully equipped and trained by Picnic Day on April 16.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene