Scorecard Evaluates Safeguards for Body Camera Programs in 25 Police Departments

WASHINGTON – Today The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Upturn hosted a press call briefing to release a new scorecard that evaluates the civil rights safeguards of body-worn camera policies being used by the country’s largest police departments with camera programs. The scorecard uses eight criteria derived from the Civil Rights Principles on Body-Worn Cameras signed by a broad coalition of civil rights, privacy, and media rights groups in May 2015.

The scorecard examines the nation’s largest police departments with body-worn camera programs: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Phoenix, Baltimore, Miami-Dade, Las Vegas, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin. It also examines additional departments that have made news for police violence, including Ferguson, Mo., and Cleveland; have received a significant amount of federal funding for programs, like Seattle, New Orleans, and Albuquerque; or have one or more policies that show particular promise, like Oakland and Parker, Colo.

The scorecard evaluates whether each department:

·         Makes its policy publicly and readily available;

·         Limits officer discretion on when to record;

·         Addresses personal privacy concerns;

·         Prohibits officer pre-report viewing;

·         Limits retention of footage;

·         Protects footage against tampering and misuse;

·         Makes footage available to individuals filing complaints; and

·         Limits the use of biometric technologies.

The scorecard shows that police departments across the country are experimenting with a wide range of body-camera policies. Other findings include:

·         Four major departments—Philadelphia PD, Detroit PD, San Antonio PD, and Albuquerque PD—either don’t have, or have never released, a body-worn camera policy, even though they have started to send cameras into the field in pilot programs.

·         Even when camera policies are in place, eight of the 12 largest departments we reviewed do not make their policies publicly and readily available on the departments’ websites.

·         Baltimore PD has the only policy we’ve seen that speaks to the use of biometric technologies in conjunction with body camera footage. Baltimore’s policy sharply limits the use of facial recognition to identify recorded individuals — an important and positive step. Such policies will help improve community relations and dampen fears about the surveillance potential that cameras could bring.

·         Atlanta PD and Ferguson PD have the weakest and least accountable policies of the departments reviewed: Each received the lowest mark in each of the eight scoring criteria

“As police departments across the nation begin to equip officers with body cameras, it is imperative to recognize that cameras are just a tool—not a substitute—for broader reforms of policing practices. Without carefully crafted policy safeguards, these devices could become instruments of injustice, rather than tools of accountability,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We hope that our scorecard will encourage reform and help departments develop body camera policies that promote accountability and protect the rights of those being recorded.”

“We developed the scorecard project because this technology is rapidly rolling out nationwide, and we believe that these factors are critical to determine whether the new equipment will actually help protect the civil rights of recorded individuals,” said Harlan Yu, principal at Upturn. “Our goal is to help departments improve their policies, by bringing attention to areas where policy improvements can be made, and by highlighting promising policy language from around the country.”

·         The policy scorecard can be found here.

·         Click here to listen to an audio recording of the press call with The Leadership Conference and Upturn.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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