In this climate of heightened concerns about policing in America, many police departments and government officials are looking to body cameras. As of January 2015, at least 72 police departments in the United States had adopted body cameras or established pilot programs for their use. President Obama has announced federal funding to help purchase 50,000 body cameras for police.

The ACLU of California supports the use of body-worn video cameras by law enforcement, but only if they are used according to policies that assure accountability, protect privacy and promote transparency and community trust. When used properly, body cameras can deter police misconduct and uses of force, provide evidence to hold officers accountable when misconduct does occur and exonerate wrongly accused officers, and help the public understand how police operate.

But body cameras are only tools. Strong policies are crucial to ensure they further the goals of improved transparency and accountability, better policing and greater trust in law enforcement. The most crucial aspects of any body camera policy include:

Clear Rules When to Record, with Minimal Officer Discretion. Body cameras don’t advance accountability if police can turn them off when they don’t want to be recorded. Officers should record all interactions with the public, and definitely all investigatory interactions (including consensual encounters). Very limited exceptions for sensitive situations (such as in instances of sexual assault or recording inside homes) should be permitted, with clear, on-camera permission to stop recording—and departments must enforce recording policies by auditing officers’ compliance and imposing meaningful consequences for failure to activate cameras or tampering with equipment.

Clear Policy on Releasing Videos that Balances Privacy Concerns with the Public Interest in Transparency. Body cameras don’t provide transparency if the video is never released to the public. Setting the right balance between privacy and transparency in public access is tricky, but some situations are clear: when the video captures a critical incident (such as a serious use of force), when there are allegations of misconduct regarding the interaction captured on video, or when the subject of the video requests it, body camera video should be released.

Restrictions on Officer Review of Video. Officers involved in a critical incident like a shooting or facing charges of misconduct should not be permitted to view footage of the incident before making a statement or writing an initial report. Police do not show video evidence to other subjects or witnesses before taking their statements, and for good reason—cognitive science has demonstrated that watching video of an incident actually changes a person’s memory. Officers should watch the video after their initial statement and have the chance to offer more information and context. Because they may not remember a stressful incident perfectly, omissions or inconsistencies in their initial account shouldn’t be grounds for discipline without evidence they intended to mislead. This would provide the fullest picture of what happened without tainting officers’ initial recollection or creating the perception that body cameras are being used to cover up misconduct rather than to hold officers accountable.

Limitations on Use of Video. Body cameras shouldn’t be used for surveillance of the public, especially gathering of intelligence information based on First Amendment protected speech, associations, or religion. Departments should bar review of video unless there’s specific reason to believe that it contains evidence of a crime or misconduct, or as part of a randomized audit or a corrective action plan for an officer, and should prohibit analysis of video with other surveillance tools, such as facial recognition technology. An Open Process that Allows for Robust Public Participation. As set forth in the ACLU of California’s November 2014 report, Making Smart Decisions About Surveillance, detailed policies governing the uses of and restrictions on any new surveillance technology should be developed in advance through an open process with public input. Body cameras are no exception. Departments should submit proposed policies for body cameras and use of, access to, and release of video to their governing bodies, and allow those bodies to decide on final policies—and whether to adopt body cameras at all—through an open, transparent process.

Campaigns

• Los Angeles Police Department
• Pasadena Police Department:  Letter - June 2, 2015
• Santa Ana Police Department:  Letter - September 24, 2015

Learn more

• ACLU Nationwide: A Model Act for Regulating the Use of Wearable Body Cameras by Law Enforcement
• ACLU Nationwide: Police Body-Mounted Cameras: With Right Policies in Place, a Win For All

The ACLU of Southern California has long fought to protect and defend the civil and human rights of unhoused people by challenging government and police practices that treat unhoused persons as criminals and make it harder for them to secure and maintain needed housing, employment and benefits.

Landmark litigation brought by the ACLU includes Jones v. City of Los Angeles, a suit to prevent the LAPD from ticketing and arresting unhoused persons who sit, sleep or lie on public sidewalks, and Valentini v. Shin­­­seki, a suit against the Veterans Administration and the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System for discriminating against unhoused veterans.

Dignity For All Project

The Dignity For All Project combines ACLU’s litigation on behalf of unhoused plaintiffs with advocacy focused on the social policy changes needed to end houselessness in Southern California communities and advance human dignity. This includes expanding access to affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, medical and mental health care, and benefits, as well as limiting counterproductive government and police practices. Such provision for basic human needs and protection from government-sanctioned harassment is necessary to ensure that even most vulnerable people can effectively participate in our democracy and fully exercise their civil rights and civil liberties.

Key to our advocacy is a focus on ending houselessness through the “Housing First” model, which gets people off the streets and into their own affordable, permanent apartments as quickly as possible. For the model to be effective, local governments must develop sufficient affordable housing to meet the demand.

Chronically unhoused persons – that is, people who suffer from mental or physical disabilities and experience frequent or long bouts of houselessness – are least able to exit houselessness and more than twice as likely as non-chronic unhoused people to be living in the streets. Their need for safe and permanent housing is particularly urgent. They require permanent supportive housing, which combines immediate permanent, affordable housing with appropriate health and mental health services.

The project works throughout Southern California, but our work is currently focused in Orange County and Los Angeles:

• Orange County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation – and least affordable. On any given night over 4,200 people are unhoused and, of those, approximately 800 are chronically unhoused. Orange County’s response has been woefully inadequate. Because the county has not taken the lead in funding and building much-needed affordable and permanent supportive housing, local cities have responded to the increase in visible houselessness by passing punitive and counterproductive measures that criminalize houselessness. The county has the resources to end houselessness and must do so by prioritizing the creation of permanent supportive housing for disabled, unhoused residents, protecting the civil and human rights of people experiencing houselessness, and closing the housing affordability gap.
• Los Angeles has long been dubbed the “unhoused capital” of America. Indeed, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2013 report to the U.S. Congress, it ranks first in the number of unhoused individuals and chronically unhoused people and second behind New York City in unhoused persons per capita. Houselessness is on the rise in Los Angeles, where over 26,000 people are living without a home (in L.A. County that number exceeds 40,000). Given shortage of shelter space and permanent housing options, about 70% of those individuals are living in the streets or in cars. The city and county routinely engage in practices designed to move unhoused persons out of public spaces such as the sidewalks of skid row, where gentrification has done little to improve the prospects for people who are unhoused. Recently the city passed harmful ordinances that will criminalize the possession of tents, makeshift shelter, and other bulky items in public places. In its recent report, the city’s administrative office showed that the City of Los Angeles spends $100 million a year on houselessness, over half of which goes to law enforcement practices that do nothing to address root causes, and in fact perpetuate, houselessness. Instead, the city and ounty should devote their resources to developing sufficient affordable and permanent supportive housing.

In addition to litigation and advocacy, the Dignity For All Project serves as a resource for unhoused individuals, providers, local governments and law enforcement agencies, and other stakeholders. 

Contact us at dignity@aclusocal.org