by Mary Rupert
Although Kansas City, Kan., recently received a $350,000 federal grant for body cameras, Unified Government Commission officials said Thursday, Oct. 29, that they can’t accept it.
The body camera program is too expensive, even with the grant, according to UG officials.
The UG Commission voted 10-0 on Oct. 29 to turn down the federal grant for body cameras. While there were some remarks in favor of the general idea of police body cameras, commissioners said they couldn’t afford it. The program would cost an estimated $3.4 million during a 10-year period, the police chief said.
Yesterday, State Sen. David Haley, D-4th Dist., of Kansas City, Kan., the author of a Senate bill last year that would have required police body cameras, said he still favors body cameras for law enforcement officers, but he is willing to consider changes to the legislation. An interim Senate committee, on which he does not serve, is currently holding hearings on body cameras.
Sen. Haley said he discussed the topic with Police Chief Terry Zeigler when Zeigler spoke at an NAACP meeting earlier this week.
UG meeting discussion centers on cost
The police chief also made presentations at a recent Standing Committee and at a UG Commission meeting last week. A 24-month extension to the grant would not change the 10-year cost of the body cameras, and the unknown element is the state government, Zeigler said in answer to a question from Mayor Mark Holland.
He said the Police Executive Research Forum director has stated that law enforcement agencies should move very cautiously toward a body-worn camera program because of the issues of privacy, cost, and the fact that the camera doesn’t capture everything.
“Once we put a camera on an officer, there will be an expectation in District Court and Municipal Court that there will be a video of the incident,” Chief Zeigler said. “I think what happens is if there’s no video, you will find that conviction rates will go down because the courts and the public will become dependent upon that evidence.”
Chief Zeigler cited the high cost of providing a fiber network and video storage for the body cameras in his report to the commission. He also said it might be necessary to add another employee who would be responsible for downloading and storing the photos.
Chief Zeigler said he liked the idea of strengthening the department’s in-car camera program. By getting fiber, the efficiency would be improved in moving the data from the car to police headquarters. According to his comments at Monday’s meeting, for a time the department did not have enough money to maintain the current cameras in police cars. Currently, he said that someone has to drive a camera’s card containing videos from the substation to the police headquarters, where it is then downloaded individually by hand and returned to the car.
He said he likes the idea of building the infrastructure first, and then see what happens with the Kansas Legislature.
“I’ll accept that as a ‘No, it’s not worth pushing it for two years,’” Mayor Holland said.
Commissioner Melissa Bynum made the motion to deny acceptance of the federal grant, and the UG Commission voted 10-0 to do that.
“I’m not ready to purchase anything this expensive,” Commissioner Mike Kane said at the Thursday meeting.
Commissioner Brian McKiernan said body cameras have proven to be a potentially valuable piece of equipment for protection of citizens and officers, but he was struggling with where this body camera program fits in the priorities of the police department.
“This comes with capital costs and personnel costs that I didn’t think about the first time around,” Commissioner McKiernan said. “There are so many other things that your police department requires because we’ve put off these purchases for so long.”
If the UG one day adds body cameras, getting fiber now could help in that effort, according to Chief Zeigler.
Commissioner Gayle Townsend pointed out the federal grant would only pay for one year of the next 10 years’ cost of the program.
Commissioner Harold Johnson said he agreed that the numbers don’t add up.
“I would encourage you to look for opportunities as we go along,” Commissioner Johnson said. “God forbid, one situation occurs, and maybe our perspective changes. I genuinely hope and pray that never happens in our community. But I would say, ‘Don’t let this die. Don’t let this issue die.’ It doesn’t make sense in terms of dollars and cents, but something could happen, and we’ve seen it every day, something happening all the time. I would just ask that you keep this as something you continue to look into as opportunities where that cost could go down.”
Commissioner Ann Murguia said she asked researchers at the University of Kansas some months ago about the latest data on body-worn cameras for police officers. At that time, they said there were some downsides in terms of cost, tradeoff and data storage issues. Balance of cost value was part of that, she said. Also, the view of the camera is only where the officer’s chest is and can’t take in the periphery, so it doesn’t take in the total view of the officer, she said.
Because so many more cities are implementing the use of body cameras, the research and data may have changed in recent months, Commissioner Murguia said.
Mayor Holland said he agreed with the commission that now is not the right time to accept this grant. “I hate applying for a grant and turning it down, because as a rule, that’s bad policy, and that’s looked down upon when we apply in the future for a grant,” he said.
He said his concerns included the cost, although $350,000 in the budget is not an unreasonable amount to think about for a program, if it’s the right program. He said more time was needed to think about it.
“I think what we’re deciding tonight is we’re not prepared to take this grant, because we’re not ready to move forward on the cameras under this format,” he said. As much money as it is, it’s only one-tenth of the cost, he said.
He also said he wanted to look into best practices for privacy issues. For example, if a police officer walked into a home, it could be a mental health crisis, and the mayor wants to make sure the confidentiality of residents was protected and the video is not available for public information requests.
“That kind of video would compromise the privacy of someone’s home,” he said. “Police find people sometimes in the worst moments of their lives.”
If it wasn’t the commission of a crime, he would like to protect the video and the privacy concerns of citizens, he said. He wants a clear policy on what videos can be released, he said.
Chief Zeigler said he is working on a policy, and has a rough draft at this point. He planned to meet with Liveable Neighborhoods, Fraternal Order of Police, Law Enforcement Advisory Board, District Attorney’s office, city prosecutor’s office, and let them review the policy to see if they had suggestions.
“As good as our policy may be or become, the issue is whether the state will come in and legislate that these videos have to be open records, that a third party can get access to the videos. Those are the unknowns we don’t know,” Zeigler said.
The unknown is what the state will do, he said.
The mayor said perhaps the funds in the UG budget set aside for body cameras could go toward car cameras and infrastructure to set this up. Perhaps some of the infrastructure purchased for the car cameras could be purchases that could begin to prepare the way for the eventual movement to body cameras, Holland said.
“I feel strongly that body-worn cameras are probably the wave of the future,” he said. “Because of the cost, it’s worth being cautious and seeing how it’s developed in other cities. The statistics do show it reduces complaints against police by some 80 percent. It also reduces incidents of potential violence for citizens. It’s a benefit for both our officers and citizens to have this long term.”
The city has had to make payouts to citizens making legal claims in the past, he said. Those tend to range from $250,000 to $500,000, and it doesn’t take too many of those to make this seem like a bargain, he said.
One allegation was proven to be without merit after a dash-cam video showed that the officer had acted in the correct manner, he added.
Approximately $500,000 in the UG’s budget for the matching money for the body cameras will be discussed by the police chief and the UG administrator to reallocate for other use in the police department, perhaps for the fiber network or police car dash cameras.
The police body camera topic was added to the UG agenda on the same day of the Oct. 29 meeting, and had been previously discussed at a UG Standing Committee meeting on Monday, Oct. 26.
State looking at body camera legislation: Policy questions more important than money issues
Sen. Haley said the interim Committee for Corrections and Juvenile Justice, of which he is not a member, took up the topic of body cameras for law enforcement on Nov. 3. The committee discussed components of Senate Bill 18, which Haley introduced last year in the Senate, that would require body cameras for all law enforcement.
“I hope there will be some policy discussions that come out of it,” Sen. Haley said.
Sen. Haley said he believes the public, including most people in Wyandotte County, supports the idea of body cameras for police. The biggest questions are about policy, not money, he said.
He said he appreciates the state and UG’s positions on the issue of body cameras, and he regrets that there was $350,000 allocated to moving the issue forward that was rejected here, and will not be reapplied for.
Sen. Haley said Wichita received a $275,000 grant and Dodge City also received a grant and are moving forward with body cameras.
Sen. Haley said he is trying to determine his position on it, and he appreciated the concerns that are being articulated by Chief Zeigler.
“Without a clear policy, these costs could be enormous and very costly to the UG,” he said.
Beyond the $700,000 (the $350,000 grant and a $350,000 match), there needs to be a policy in place for equipment, maintenance of equipment, when the cameras run and don’t run, he said.
Sen. Haley said that if Chief Zeigler had had on a body camera the other night at the NAACP meeting, Sen. Haley wouldn’t have necessarily wanted his private conversation with him recorded on camera. He agreed there should be an opportunity for an officer to turn off the camera.
Sen. Haley said Chief Zeigler mentioned that the willingness of witnesses to come forward and speak freely to officers, knowing that a camera is running, could be affected by body cameras. That is not a result that Sen. Haley would want, he said.
The state’s police agency, the Kansas Highway Patrol, runs dash cameras in cars, and has been storing the data on DVDs, which has been cheaper than other methods, Sen. Haley remarked. He said it has not had to add personnel who work with data storage.
“The issues here are policy driven,” Sen. Haley said. “It is clear that the majority of Kansans, Wyandotte Countians and Americans genuinely appreciate active law enforcement wearing a body camera during their shift or during interactions with others,” he said.
While he is the author of a bill last session that would have required body cameras, he wouldn’t want to suggest that he doesn’t appreciate what he considers to be real concerns about the issues, Sen. Haley said.
There are genuine policy concerns of cost, privacy, storage and also when cameras should be running and not running, he said.
“I believe, and many others do, that a body camera should be as much a part of a police officer’s equipment as a gun and a badge, part of his standard equipment,” Sen. Haley said.
The cost of body cameras is really not as much as it seems if a city otherwise has to face potential civil lawsuits costing it thousands or millions of dollars, according to Sen. Haley. Often, a video will show the officer has been acting properly.
With the Legislature, Sen. Haley is taking a “wait and see” attitude, looking forward to seeing what the interim committee recommends and looking forward to a debate on the topic, he said. He added he didn’t expect the Legislature to pass his original Senate Bill 18, and he expected changes to be made, some with his approval.
“I’m going to continue my fight for it, I just want it to be the right fight,” Sen. Haley said.