St. Paul police are mostly using new body cameras when they are supposed to and complying with department policy, according to an internal review released Tuesday.
In 583 traffic stops — which officers are required to capture on body camera — all but 22 were recorded without any problems.
Those included nine videos not correctly categorized in the records system, a few technical problems with cameras and one instance of an officer forgetting to activate a camera, according to the police department.
The department also checked to ensure officers had their body cameras recording while responding to burglary calls, which is mandated, and found they did in all 71 cases in the first quarter of 2018.
“This program is a work in progress, but we’re off to a good start,” said St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell. “I’m happy with the way our officers have embraced this new technology.”
In Minneapolis, the police department’s body camera policy was criticized last summer when two officers involved in the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond did not activate their body cameras when they were dispatched to her home.
Minneapolis officials announced more guidelines around their body camera policy in April.
St. Paul Police Cmdr. Jeremy Ellison, who heads the department’s Body-Worn Camera Review Committee, said they have been “trying to learn from other agencies throughout the country and mistakes they’ve made.”
Axtell said challenges they identified in the beginning were some instances of officers forgetting to turn on their cameras when required, not properly classifying videos, or wearing a jacket that blocked the camera view.
The department responded by providing officers with additional training and, in one case, giving an officer “a supervisory coaching session,” according to the report released Tuesday.
“We were really looking at a lot of these as training issues and people getting used to the cameras,” Ellison said. “None of the mistakes were egregious and none appeared intentional.”
Don Gemberling, who advocated at the Legislature for more openness with body cam footage, said he thinks the St. Paul report is missing a key component.
“Are they seeing things (in the videos) that officers are doing that they don’t want them to do?,” said Gemberling, a board member for the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information. “The big thing about the body cameras is they were going to make cops more accountable and … I don’t think (the report) tells us much about whether or not they’re reaching that objective.”
As the police department reviews videos to ensure body camera policy is being followed, supervisors also watch officer behavior, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a department spokesman. He said a small number of officers have been disciplined as a result.
“We hold ourselves to the highest standard and address violations of policies if they are observed,” Ernster said.
NEARLY 20,000 HOURS OF VIDEO IN THREE MONTHS
The first body cameras were rolled out in St. Paul in September and, as of January, the program was fully running.
Any St. Paul officer working in uniform is required to wear a camera. Department policy says officers are to turn on their cameras when they’re dispatched to, or investigating, any call or incident. They’re also to activate the cameras when stopping vehicles, arresting people, involved in adversarial situations and more.
The police department instituted a quality-control process to ensure officers are following policy and Axtell said they released Tuesday’s report in the interest of transparency.
On Wednesday, Axtell is due to address the City Council about the body-camera review, crime statistics and officer recruitment.
Highlights from the first body-camera review, which covered January to March, include:
- There were 87,544 videos recorded, which amounted to 19,781 hours.
- The Body-Worn Camera Committee, made up of department supervisors, reviewed a random sample each month of 24 videos — they watched each from beginning to end. Of the 72 reviewed over three months, 10 “had very minor policy violations,” such as an incorrect case number assigned to the video, according to the report. In seven cases that officers were dispatched to, they had not activated the camera before arrival.
- The review committee also selected two types of calls that officers are required to record — traffic stops and burglaries — to ensure that officers were recording them. They expanded the checks in the second quarter to officers responding to crashes, K-9 calls and “more closely reviewing all calls involving force to ensure that videos exist from all officers at the scene,” Axtell said.
- In addition to the videos checked by the committee, another 2,477 videos were reviewed by supervisors and investigators as part of their day-to-day duties.
PUBLIC ACCESS TO FOOTAGE IS LIMITED
St. Paul STRONG, a citizens watchdog group, had Axtell at their meeting on Sunday and discussed body cameras with him, said Laura Goodman, who is the group’s secretary and has more than 35 years of criminal justice experience.
Goodman thinks there continues to be disagreement between some community members and police about what body camera footage should be public.
“I happen to be one of the people who weigh on the side of the victim because … if you’ve had a crime happen to you, you don’t necessarily want everybody to be able to see that,” said Goodman, who was previously the state ombudsman for crime victims. “Other people feel like the police have too much control over what criteria they use to make things public.”
State law requires all body camera footage to be private — and thus, inaccessible by the public without a subject’s consent — unless an officer in it causes someone substantial bodily harm or fires a gun. People who appear in body camera footage could get a copy only after an investigation is completed.
St. Paul police released a report on Tuesday about the department’s first quarter of body camera use.
Last year, the St. Paul police department posted footage of the first body camera footage recorded, a routine traffic stop.
