By Peter Bibring and Jay Stanley

The ACLU of Southern California asked the Department of Justice today not to provide grant money to the Los Angeles Police Department for body cameras, because the LAPD’s policy for the cameras is so poor.

In particular, as the letter states, the policy “does not promote — and in fact undermines — the goals of transparency, accountability and creation of public trust that body cameras should serve.” The letter continues:

We believe that the policy LAPD ultimately adopted to govern body cameras suffers from such serious flaws that we oppose the use of body cameras under its terms. By withholding video from the public, requiring officers to review video before making statements in use of force and misconduct investigations, and failing to include protections against the use of body cameras as general surveillance tools, LAPD’s policy provides no transparency and threatens to taint the integrity of investigations and undermine the public trust.

The ACLU has said since the beginning that we support body cameras provided that they are deployed with good policies that will ensure they actually live up to their potential as a tool for increased police transparency and accountability.

In December 2014, in the wake of the Ferguson and Eric Garner protests, President Obama announced a plan to dedicate $75 million towards police body cameras. In May, the DOJ announced that it would tie funding for the cameras to good policies.

“Successful applicants must demonstrate a commitment and adherence to a strong BWC [body-worn camera] Policy framework,” the DOJ proclaimed, adding that “policies and practices should at a minimum increase transparency and accessibility” and “provide appropriate access to information.”

The LAPD is now applying for grant funds from the DOJ program. The problem is, as the ACLU SoCal letter puts it:

The body camera program implemented by LAPD’s policy is very different from the kind of program contemplated by the DOJ. Nationally, both the White House and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing have cast body-worn cameras as tools for improving transparency, trust, and oversight…. The policy adopted by LAPD explicitly sets out a very different set of objectives which nowhere mention as goals increasing transparency and public trust.

The letter also points out that the process by which the LAPD adopted its policy was deeply flawed. While the department did hold community meetings on the cameras (including a meeting with the ACLU), the policy that resulted from this process was sprung on the public less than two business days before the meeting at which the Board of Police Commissioners voted to approve it, allowing no meaningful opportunity for community analysis, criticism, and feedback.

The DOJ’s first major grant to support police body cameras should not fund a program that fails to promote transparency and that allow officers to use body cameras footage in ways that undermine the integrity of investigations into police misconduct and use of force.

The DOJ has recognized the importance of good policies surrounding the deployment of police body cameras. Now it is time for them to follow through and deny DOJ funds to those departments that lack such policies. If they don’t, word will quickly spread within the police community that the program’s stated goals are just lofty rhetoric, and all that’s required to get grants is to have some kind of policy in place — any kind — and to go through some motions of community engagement, merely as bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

Spending millions on a technology because of its promise to build trust between communities and police, but not requiring departments to use them in ways that will actually build trust, would be to squander not only taxpayer money but a valuable opportunity to change the dynamic of policing in America.

Read the letter

Peter Bibring is director of police practices at the ACLU of Southern California Jay Stanley is senior policy analyst with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

By Chauncee Smith

One year now removed from Ferguson, it seems like we could never be closer to it.

Last August, we bore witness to the unsettling death of 18-year-old Michael Brown and, 12 months later, we see that little has changed.

Since Brown’s death, unarmed black men have been killed by law enforcement at alarmingly disproportionate rates. Specifically, reports indicate that black men account for 40 percent of 60 unarmed deaths at the hands of police this year, and are seven times more likely than white men to be shot to death by police while unarmed. At the state level, California holds the ominous record for the highest number of civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement this year, currently totaling 129.

Meanwhile, bystander, dash and body-worn camera footage make it more difficult to escape the very real implications of these numbers.

We saw what happened to Samuel Dubose, Walter Scott, Charly Keunang and Tamir Rice.

We heard about Brandon Glenn, Freddie Gray, Christian Taylor, and countless others.

In California, such racialized police violence walks in-tune with views regarding our system of public safety. Polls show that a majority (55 percent) of Californians believe that people of color do not receive equal treatment in in the criminal justice system, and a supermajority (71 percent) believe that young black males are more likely to be discriminated against by police.

Given these stark realities, one might think that it would be relatively easy to pass legislation to address systemic problems with biased policing. That view, however, could not be farther from the truth.

This session, our state legislature has considered more than two-dozen police reform measures, but, due to overwhelming influence held by law enforcement lobbies, a mere handful are still live.

One of the most meaningful proposals left, AB 953: The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015, would combat racial profiling and help address the disproportionate rates at which people of color are being killed by police.

Authored by Assemblymember Shirley Weber, AB 953 would place California on a path toward fair policing by modernizing our state definition of profiling to include identity characteristics beyond race, creating a uniform system for collecting and reporting basic information on police-community interactions, and establishing an advisory board that develops solutions to curb profiling. A recent poll shows that approximately 67 percent of likely California voters support AB 953.

But knowing that many in Sacramento are reluctant to stand up to the law enforcement lobby, several hundred Californians will be marching and rallying at the Capitol to call on lawmakers to pass and Gov. Brown to sign AB 953.

We know we are experiencing a deep crisis in biased policing, but it seems like Sacramento needs some reminding.

It’s time California took the necessary steps to address this crisis and affirm that Black Lives Matter.

Take Action

Urge your representative and Governor Brown to end racial profiling and pass AB 953.
 

The ACLU of California is a proud co-sponsor of AB 953, along with Reform California, Dignity & Power Now, Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Sacramento, PICO California and Youth Justice Coalition. Chauncee Smith is racial justice advocate at the ACLU of California Center for Advocacy and Policy.