In Rochester, New York, police commanders delayed the release of body camera video of a police encounter that led to the death of Daniel Prude in March 2020. An oversight board questioned why the department could not just blur their faces. The department in the Hawaii capital has said it will not release footage of the 16-year-old’s killing because juveniles were involved. Meanwhile in Honolulu, police have yet to release video from the fatal April 5 shooting of a 16-year-old boy despite taking just two days to release some footage of the April 14 killing of a 29-year-old man. The national Fraternal Order of Police commended the quick action in a statement, calling it “a demonstration of what police transparency looks like - getting the facts out before the narrative can be distorted or disinformation takes hold in a community.” The release came about five hours after the shooting. On Tuesday night, police released footage of Columbus officer Nicholas Reardon shooting 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant as she swung a knife toward another girl. Coy was fired shortly thereafter and has since been charged with murder. Additional footage showed several officers failing to come to the aid of Hill. 23, the agency released footage of officer Adam Coy fatally shooting Andre Hill as he walked out of a garage holding up a cellphone one day earlier. In Columbus, which adopted body cameras five years ago, police have moved quickly to release shooting footage twice in recent months - once to disapprove of an officer’s action and then again to explain why a different officer acted the way he did. “You get to see a very, very small amount of the information, and then you form an opinion on it, and it may or may not be accurate,” Alpert said, pointing to a colleague’s study showing how close-up body camera footage of an apparent fight was actually two men dancing. If that happens, “you have now damaged the potential for prosecuting this officer,” Klinger said.Īlpert, a federal monitor for the New Orleans Police Department and an adviser to the Portland police, said hesitancy among some departments to release body camera footage may stem from the power the images have to sway public opinion. Releasing a video before officers or witnesses have been interviewed or all evidence has been collected could threaten the integrity of the investigation, Klinger said, giving a defense lawyer an opportunity to challenge any disciplinary action or criminal charges. Without a consistent policy on releasing body camera footage - along with 911 calls and dashboard camera video - police departments run the risk of jeopardizing ongoing investigations into officers’ actions, said David Klinger, a former police officer who teaches criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Other times, as in the fatal 2019 shooting of a man in apparent mental health crisis, the footage was kept from the public for more than a year and a half. The New York City department, for instance, has sometimes released body camera clips within hours when it suited the agency’s interests in justifying the use of force or explaining an event. Within individual police departments, there can be major inconsistencies in the release of footage. The figure is typically lower among smaller departments because of the high cost of storage. More than 80 percent of departments with more than 500 officers now use body cameras. In general, “there just seems to be no reason not to release 99% of the body cams in these situations,” Alpert said, “unless there are faces you’ve got to blur out and other things you’ve got to do.” City leaders say they support adopting the technology but do not have money to pay for it. The police department there is one of the few big city forces that has yet to equip its officers with cameras. In Portland, Oregon, there is no body camera footage to see. Instead, the media and public must request the release, which often does not happen unless a trial judge orders it - a process critics say limits transparency. It’s even harder for the public to see body camera footage in North Carolina because those recordings are not considered public records.
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