Chicago’s Police Body Cam Transparency
by Michael Dean Thompson
Police body cameras were full of promise. After several high-profile police killings, people turned to body cams for a solution. It makes sense. Cameras were already recording an increasing number of incidents as civilians witnessed events that poorly matched police reports. If the cops were wearing body cams, it was hoped that not only would they be more circumspect in their behavior but also that those that went rogue would be held to account. But it did not turn out that way.
Chicago, nevertheless, apparently leads the nation in body cam transparency. “I’m not aware of any other civilian agency that does what Chicago does on releasing video,” Florence Finkle, Vice President of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, told ProPublica.
It has not always been that way in Chicago, a city with a nasty reputation for brutal policing and cover ups. Almost 10 years ago, cops killed a 17-year-old boy who they said lunged at them with a knife, but a whistleblower reached out to University of Chicago’s Craig Futterman. After about a year, a judge finally forced the city to release dash cam video of the incident. And Chicago’s denizens saw the truth: the boy was walking away from the cops when they shot him 16 times in the back. Lying next to him on the ground after he fell was the knife, folded.
As a result of the video, the murderous cop was convicted, federal investigators became involved, and Chicago thought hard about police accountability. It is tragic that it took the murder of a teenager, but Chicago now stands out for creating the Civilian Oversight of Police Accountability (“COPA”). Cops in Chicago must now release videos within 60 days of an incident. In addition, family members of cop victims are promised first view of the videos. The policy states, “The people of Chicago have an undeniable, and in some cases paramount, interest in being informed, in a timely fashion, and based on the most accurate information possible, about how their police force conducts its business.”
Within a year after COPA was established, the agency gained the ability to log in to the video storage system themselves, giving their investigators the ability to search the footage themselves. The resulting investigations into cop misbehavior are “the highest quality I’ve ever seen,” said University of Chicago’s Futterman.
The Fraternal Order of Police negotiated a new contract in 2023 that worked to limit COPA’s effectiveness, however. Among the limitations imposed included the prevention of post-incident conversations captured by cameras (e.g., bragging about a beating) from being used in disciplinary cases. In the same way, if a cop accidentally turns his camera ON, the resulting captured behavior cannot be disciplined. Giving cops access to an off-switch disables transparency and is a feature Chicago cops have a history of failing to power on.
Even so, the rest of the country still lags far behind Chicago.
Source: ProPublica.org
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