Civil and Human Rights Coalition Applauds D.C.’s Model Legislation on Police Body-Worn Cameras

WASHINGTON – Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement in advance of a DC Council vote Tuesday on a set of transparency and accountability rules for the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) body-worn camera program that, if adopted, would make the District a leader in providing safeguards for community members and officers.  The Leadership Conference and Upturn recently released a body-worn camera scorecard that evaluated the transparency and accountability provisions for MPD and 24 other police departments:

“If adopted, these transparency and access safeguards for MPD’s body-worn camera program would be a model for the nation on how to responsibly implement a police camera program.

Too many jurisdictions have rushed to implement police body-worn cameras without thoughtfully considering the consequences for the communities that would be surveilled, or for the potential for the footage to actually undermine police accountability. 

There is a temptation to create a false equivalence between citizen-recorded videos, like the footage of Jason Goolsby, and the body-worn cameras operated by law enforcement. The two are not the same. Police body-worn cameras are not operated by concerned citizens and are not recording officers; they are directed at members of the community.    

Recent events around the nation powerfully demonstrate why recordings must also be made available in ways that promote accountability. The rules the DC Council considers today would achieve that goal while protecting the privacy of people in their homes and in their most vulnerable moments. The proposed rules will enhance accountability by making recordings made in public spaces compatible with the Freedom of Information Act and allow subjects of video to review the footage of themselves.

Most importantly, the policy will make the city a leader in ensuring that officers file an initial report based solely on their recollections of an event, rather than on a review of video footage. Footage can be misleading or incomplete. That’s why other sources of evidence, including the officer’s own independent recollection of an incident, must be preserved. Without such protections, there would be a risk that the officer’s report and the video may appear to provide independent confirmation of each other, when they really aren’t independent at all.

Councilmember McDuffie and the council should be commended for unanimously voting in favor of these safeguards earlier this month. For the sake of the people of Washington who will be subject to more police surveillance than ever before under this program, we urge them to unanimously support this legislation again and to send it to Mayor Bowser for her signature.”

Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 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.