Minneapolis police close in on body camera policy

As Minneapolis police get ready to unpack the new body camera hardware for officers to wear as part of their uniforms, the department is finalizing a policy that'll govern exactly where and when officers must press the record button.

The department says it'll start rolling them out late next month downtown. Then officers on the north side will begin using them. By the end of the year around 600 patrol officers will have them citywide.

The Police Department is still fine-tuning its rules for the cameras, drawing some criticism from city council members and others in the community.

The latest draft of the policy says officers shall activate their cameras before incidents including traffic and suspicious person stops, and if they anticipate a verbal or physical confrontation.

Police may choose to turn their cameras on for general citizen contacts where the officer feels recording is appropriate. That includes taking statements from a victim, suspect or witness.

Minneapolis Deputy Chief Travis Glampe says the policy was crafted after public input sessions, and remains a work in progress.

"We still have a good month and a half before we're looking at putting these out, so we're going to take the opportunity to present what we've heard, present what we've changed. And if there's any other input that the public wants to give us, we'd certainly be more than happy to take that in," Glampe said.

With the footage generally subject to open records requests Deputy Chief Medaria Arradondo said there are times when officers may stop recording.

"There are certain situations, whether they're talking to a child, whether they're talking to a victim of abuse, whether someone wants to really just engage them and provide information without being recorded," Arradondo said.

City Council Member Blong Yang, who represents north Minneapolis and chairs the public safety committee, says body cams have the potential to clarify what happens during a critical incident.

The officers in the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark were not wearing cameras, leaving investigators to work with conflicting statements from police and witnesses, as well as video from cameras not set up to capture the incident fully.

Yang says that highlights the need for body cameras, but points out the purchase was in the works long before the Clark shooting and the Hennepin County attorney's decision not to charge the officers. Still, he says some may see problems with the department's draft policy.

"For a lay person to look at the policy, they're not going to have any faith that if a police officer violates something in the policy, there's going to be any consequences," he said. "So I think a policy that's written so that there are consequences makes a lot more sense and gives people a lot more faith that something is going to be done."

The policy also says to ensure accuracy, officers should review body cam audio and video before writing up an incident report or making a statement.

But South Minneapolis resident Liz Oppenheimer, who attended the public safety committee meeting Wednesday, says she's concerned about that portion of the evolving policy.

"Officers should not be allowed to view the recordings that were produced by the body cams before they write their report," she said. Those two actions should be separate, in part to protect evidentiary value of both the individual officer's report, and the recordings that are produced by the body cam."

Oppenheimer notes this was a key recommendation of the city's Police Conduct Oversight Commission last September.

The commission last month criticized the Police Department's camera rules, saying they give officers too much discretion and demand too little accountability.

As the department finalizes its rules for officers' recording of civilians, Deputy Chief Arradondo says the department is also writing a policy to let those same officers know civilians have the right to take video of police, too.