The Little Rock Police Department will research equipping its officers with wearable cameras, joining dozens of law enforcement agencies across the country who have researched or started using the devices as tools to increase department transparency and defend against litigation.
Earlier this month, Chief Kenton Buckner formed a six-person committee, led by Capt. Alice Fulk, that will contact Phoenix; Seattle; Fort Worth; New Orleans; and Louisville, Ky., police for insights on each department's body camera program. The process is expected to last one year as the state's largest police department will collect information on camera models, usage policies, testing and data storage, as well as seek federal grants to help pay for the devices.
The committee will present its findings to the Little Rock Board of Directors for possible inclusion in the city's 2016 budget, Fulk said.
Jonesboro, Jacksonville, Ward, Beebe, Glenwood and Austin police are among the Arkansas law enforcement agencies that have equipped certain officers with body cameras in recent years.
The small, lightweight devices are clipped onto a uniform or head wear to record public interactions from an officer's point of view.
Companies including Taser and Prima Facie have reported a surge in sales of the devices since August, when questions of officer accountability and civil rights were raised in the shooting death of Micheal Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
North Little Rock is also looking into body cameras for its police officers. The department has equipped two patrol officers with a Taser-brand camera each week of October in a month-long trial. Officers have been recording "every contact we have with the public, whether it be a traffic stop, vehicle accident, call for service or whatever the case may be," Capt. Jay Kovach said.
Kovach said the department is interested in using the devices as a training and supervisory tool with new officers. North Little Rock police are also considering the cameras as an alternative to replacing broken or obsolete dashboard-mounted cameras in patrol cars, which are more expensive.
Kovach said last week that the department has received crisp images and audio from encounters with the public and received generally positive feedback from officers wearing the cameras.
Taser advertises its body cameras as weather-resistant and "ultra-durable," and they lived up to the latter claim on at least one occasion in North Little Rock this month. An officer was struck in the face while a camera was mounted on his sunglasses, according to Kovach. The attack broke the officer's glasses and left him with minor cuts, but the camera was not damaged.
The department plans to also test Prima Facie body cameras, but it's unclear when that will happen. Prima Facie placed the department on a waiting list due to high demand, Kovach said.
Police in New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; Houston; and Washington, D.C., have also tested body cameras recently.
Ferguson police equipped its officers with body cameras after Brown's slaying.
North Little Rock police said that because their body camera inquiry was in its early stages, they had no official policies for officer use and hadn't spoken to city attorneys about legal issues associated with the devices, such as whether camera footage is subject to public records requests.
The cameras have also raised privacy concerns over whether officers can film in someone's home and if they need permission to record someone in states with two-party consent laws.
Pennsylvania waived its two-party consent law for officers wearing body cameras earlier this year.
Arkansas, like most states, has a one-party consent law.
Little Rock police met with assistant city attorney Sherri Latimer on Oct. 17 to discuss various legal concerns related to the cameras, which Fulk said would be "the most important part" of the committee's research. She said that body cameras will not be tested until legal questions are answered.
"We're trying to find out who, what and when we can record, and obviously, we want to talk about [recording] juveniles, as well," she said. "And it's important if somebody were to turn around and [request footage under the state's Freedom of Information Act]. We need to know what we can release, what we can't release."
Fulk said the committee had not yet estimated the cost of outfitting the department's 193 patrol officers with body cameras or how many officers could initially receive the devices.
"My opinion would be that if we don't have the funding for all the patrol, it may be a situation that we gradually phase them into patrol," she said.
The prices of the cameras -- which range from several hundred dollars to nearly $2,000 apiece -- have been prohibitive for many police departments. In a 2013 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice and Police Executive Research Forum that yielded responses from 254 police departments, more than half the departments that didn't use body cameras cited cost as the primary reason.
North Little Rock police tested body cameras in 2011 but determined they weren't affordable at the time.
The two Taser cameras the department is testing this month are advertised at $499 and $599 on the company's website.
The cost has led some agencies to seek funding outside their budgets and legislators to increase criminal fees to pay for the devices.
Los Angeles police raised $1.3 million from private donors last year to purchase 600 body cameras after the department finishes an ongoing trial with the devices.
Police in Greensboro, N.C., also raised funds to purchase body cameras.
In New Jersey, legislation was introduced this month that would fund body cameras for police departments statewide through increased drunken driving fines. If passed, the bill would require all municipal, state and county officers to wear the cameras. About 20 law enforcement agencies in the state have already equipped their officers with body cameras.
"The technology is there," Fulk said. "Officers are responding to calls, and you have citizens that are [video recording]. I don't think it's going to hurt for the officers. It somewhat protects them, as well. It protects the citizens, also, if we're recording."
Fulk's sentiment echoed the findings of the few studies that exist on officer body cameras. The devices have been shown to yield major decreases in complaints against officers and instances of officers using force.
Police officers in Rialto, Calif., a city of about 100,000 west of San Bernardino, began wearing body cameras in February 2012 in a year-long study conducted with the University of Cambridge.
There were nearly 60 percent fewer instances of officers using force than in the previous 12 months, which was attributed to the "tendency of rational beings to exhibit more desirable behaviors when they know they're under surveillance."
The number of complaints against officers also plummeted from 28 to 3.
Half of Rialto's 115 officers wore body cameras during the study, which yielded more than 6,700 hours of footage totaling 724 gigabytes of data.
In October 2012, the Mesa (Ariz.) Police Department began a year-long study on body cameras with Arizona State University. Officers assigned to wear the devices had 40 percent fewer complaints and 75 percent fewer complaints about the use of force than they did the previous 12 months.
The cameras have also helped exonerate officers in fatal shootings and accusations of misconduct.
Last week, an Albuquerque, N.M., police officer was cleared of sexual harassment allegations by a woman he arrested on drunken driving charges. The entire encounter, from the traffic stop to the woman's jail booking, was recorded by the officer's body camera and released to the media. The footage showed no misconduct.
In 2009, Fort Smith police Sgt. Brandon Davis was testing a Taser body camera when he shot an armed man to death while responding to a domestic violence call. Prosecutors determined days later that the shooting was justified. Footage of the events that led to the shooting was released to the media.
In other cases, camera footage -- or a lack thereof -- has fostered public distrust.
San Diego police have been criticized by community leaders and civil-rights advocates for refusing to release body camera footage under public records requests even after an investigation involving a video has been completed.
About 300 of the city's nearly 1,000 officers are equipped with body cameras.
Earlier this month, a New Orleans police officer turned off her body camera before shooting a man in the head during a traffic stop. Police are investigating the event, one of several across the country in which officers have deactivated body cameras during shootings or other uses of force that they're required to record.
The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern over officers' ability to turn off their cameras in a 2013 study by senior policy analyst Jay Stanley.
"The balance that needs to be struck is to ensure that officers can't manipulate the video records, while also ensuring that officers are not subject to a relentless regime of surveillance without any opportunity for shelter from constant monitoring," the study says.
The study recommends the cameras be deployed within a "framework of strong policies" to ensure proper use, as well as an auditing system and limited video access to prevent tampering.
Such measures would help alleviate privacy concerns and "protect the public without [the cameras] becoming yet another system for routine surveillance" the study states.
Most Little Rock police officers and about eight officers in North Little Rock have Taser electroshock guns equipped with cameras that record when the weapon is fired. But footage can be obscured depending on how an officer grips the weapon.
Both departments store footage from the weapons for three years.
"This is just the trend that we're going to, with more accountability with the officers," Fulk said. "And it can not only help the officers, but it can help the citizens, as well."
Metro on 10/27/2014