EVEN BEFORE Mayor Charlie Hales hastily exited city council chambers amid a hail of profanity last week, it was clear: Portlandâs first glimpse at rules for police body cameras wasnât going great.
After more than a year of work and six public hearings on the topic, the city had just unveiled a draft policy [PDF] for how cops will be required to use the fast-spreading technology thatâs popped up in the wake of endless questionable police shootings around the country.
City officials didnât actually want to unveil the draft policy yet. It had to be revealed because it was mentioned in a tentative agreement with the cityâs largest police union, the Portland Police Association (PPA), over a new contract.
Still, by the time the draft saw daylight, it had the full support of the PPA. With public approval, Portland might be one step closer to a tool advocates say can improve police accountability and slash citizen complaints.
The thing is, if the intermingled anger over the draft body cam policy and the (largely unrelated) new police union contract at the September 28 hearing are any indication, the public does not approve. Nor do some city officials.
âFrom my perspective, this current version of the policy would set back oversight,â says Constantin Severe, director of the cityâs Independent Police Review, which investigates citizen complaints against cops. Severeâs boss, City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero, voiced similar concerns in an October 3 memo to city council members.
Theyâre not alone. The draft policy the cityâs worked up falls short of the ideals advocated by national civil rights groups.
In August, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm called Upturn teamed up with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to look at body camera policies in cities throughout the country, scoring them with a set of principles it says are necessary to protect civil rightsâthings like when cops can view the footage theyâve taken, and how strictly theyâre forced to hit the record button during an incident.
Chicago, according to the audit, has a fairly robust policy. Fresno? Not so much.
So the Mercury asked Upturn to grade Portlandâs nascent policy. The results werenât great.
Out of eight categoriesâscored with a self-explanatory green check, yellow circle, or red XâPortlandâs draft policy aced just two, according to Upturnâs reading. The firm says the policy adequately protects the privacy of sensitive parties like victims and witnesses, and doesnât leave much wiggle room in what types of events must be recorded.
One category, limiting officersâ ability to misuse footage, got partial approval. Five additional categories were given a red X, meaning the policy is problematic or doesnât address the matter. Groups like the ACLU of Oregon and Portland Copwatch have also raised concerns.
That might change. Hales and others have made clear in recent days that the body camera policy is merely a draft, and that the public will have an opportunity to offer critiques and discuss potential edits.
The mayor, whoâs out of office at the end of the year, is far more focused on pushing through a new contract with the police union than nailing down a body camera policy. As Hales told the Mercury recently: âBy the time the body camera policy is adopted, I will be a private citizen.â
But if heâs too busy to dig into the specifics, you shouldnât be. Here are four pieces of the draft body camera policy that should be discussed before itâs finalized.
SERT Officers Are Left Out
Under the policy, gang cops, transit cops, patrol officers, and others are all specifically required to wear body cameras. Left out? Cops working on the Special Emergency Reaction Team (SERT), Portlandâs version of SWAT.
Thatâs a problem for oversight advocates. Portland Copwatchâs Dan Handelman says the omission makes no sense, since such officers are âmost likely as a unit to use implements of deadly force.â The ACLU of Oregon has argued the same thing.
Hales, when asked about this omission on Monday, said he wasnât aware of it. But PPA President Daryl Turner argues the rule makes sense, since the city doesnât want to give up SERTâs tactical secrets.
âThey are highly trained individuals,â Turner said. âWe wouldnât want those things to be on camera.â
Turnerâs opinion has outsize weight. The city has agreed that the body cam policy is subject to âmandatory bargaining,â meaning that if the union doesnât like it, it can file a grievance and take its case to an arbitratorâa scenario that most often works out in the unionâs favor.
In Handelmanâs view, itâs fine if the city wants to limit access to sensitive SERT recordingsâit just needs to possess them.
âYou can exempt it from release,â he says. âYou just need to record it.â
Incidentally, the draft policy might also leave out the police bureauâs Crisis Negotiation Team, which sometimes joins the SERT in responding to highly charged scenarios. The policyâs wording is unclear.
Exceptions to Hitting Record
Portlandâs draft policy got high marks from Upturn for its insistence that cops activate their cameras, in most cases, âupon receipt of a call for service where a possible crime is in progress or has just occurredââeven when an officer self-initiates a stop.
The policy also requires officers to ânotify a supervisor and document the reasonâ if they failed to hit record at a prescribed time.
The language is in line with what advocates recommendâbut it has the potential to leave out vital footage. According to a September 30 piece in the Atlantic, a central weakness of new body camera policies around the country is that officers are failing to record during high-profile events.
Recent officer-involved shootings in Charlotte, Chicago, and DC, all included instances of an officer not pressing record. "In case after case, police departments say officers did not have their body cameras activated when it counted," the Atlanticâs Robinson Meyer writes.Â
In high-stress instances, Portlandâs draft policy gives officers an out: It says in cases of a perceived âimmediate threat,â cops donât have to press record until theyâre out of danger.
Cops View Footage Before Reporting
The draft policy says officers get to review their body cam footage before writing an incident report unless deadly force was used.
Thatâs a provision thatâs been pushed nationally by the police lobby, and which the PPAâs Turner says is necessary to help prosecutions. But itâs a red flag for many.
âIâd be really concerned about a system where a cop gets to review the evidence and the suspects donât,â says City Commissioner Steve Novick.
The ACLU, Portland Copwatch, and Upturn all agree.
âPre-report viewing by officers creates an uneven playing field,â Harlan Yu, a principal at Upturn, told reporters when unveiling his firmâs report in August. âThis gives officers an undue advantage over other witnesses in a court of law. Officer statements will always appear more accurate.â
Even Portlandâs exemption for deadly force incidents, which a handful of cities across the country have used, isnât helpful in Upturnâs view, since there is still leeway for senior police officials to allow an officer to view the footage.
Supervisors Have Very Limited Access to Footage
For IPRâs Severe, a central problem with the draft policy is that it hamstrings the bureau from overseeing copsâ performance via video.
The policy contains provisions that say supervisors and professional standards officers canât look at video for a performance review or to discover policy violations, and that they may not ârandomlyâ review recordings of any officer.
âYouâre not allowing the city to use this as a means of being proactive in looking at body-worn cameras and making sure these tools are measuring up,â Severe says. âOnce youâre a year or two into using these body-worn cameras, how do they work? And are members using them appropriately?
âI donât really think this meets the publicâs expectations.â
What public input for the draft body camera policy looks like remains to be seen.
Hales has introduced language that would direct the police bureau to convene a âstakeholder committeeâ to review the policy for best practices, and would allow the general public to comment as well. A report will eventually go before city council.
But as we noted above, all changes will need to pass muster with the PPA, lest they lead to an acrimonious labor dispute. Turner, the unionâs president, promises heâs keeping an open mind.
âItâs all negotiable,â he says. âWhat weâve done is put together the four corners. From what we can tell right now, this is what the policy is. Things might change.â