On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to establish a committee to study whether the Madison Police Department should implement a body-worn camera program. It is the third such committee since 2015 to be created to review the merits of the technology.
To prevent spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the council has been meeting via Zoom video conferences. Tuesday’s second-ever fully virtual meeting yielded more hiccups than the first digital meeting a few weeks ago.
Some council members were muted at times when they tried to talk, one council member was delayed in joining the Zoom conference for a few minutes and one vote had to be redone because another alder was unable to vote due to poor internet connectivity. But overall, the interruptions were minor or got resolved by city staff.
The new committee to study body cameras will be called the Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee. It is required to submit its recommendations to the council by January.
Sponsors of the resolution to create the committee — Alds. Shiva Bidar, 5th District, and Marsha Rummel, 6th District — have been skeptical of body cameras in the past. Ald. Paul Skidmore, 9th District, a longtime supporter of piloting body cameras, has said he fears the new committee might be an attempt to kill a body-worn camera pilot.
Council members approved the creation of the committee without discussion. They had a lengthy argument about whether to expand the scope of the committee, but that amendment failed.
One of the previous committees that had studied body cameras opposed the technology out of fears it would be abused or seen as a false panacea to improve public trust in law enforcement.
But the Madison Police Department Policy and Procedure Review Ad Hoc Committee, which studied MPD’s policies for four years and recommended 177 changes to the department in a years-in-the-making report, suggested that body-worn cameras get a second look. That group was the one to recommend body cameras be studied again.
A 2014 police department report on body cameras found that the cameras can increase transparency and lead to fewer complaints from citizens, but it also questioned whether cameras would deliver on the promise of improving community relations and estimated a high cost — about $955,000 — to implement a camera program citywide.
Of the 24 police agencies active in Dane County, 13 equip patrol officers with body-worn cameras, including Sun Prairie, Middleton and Fitchburg. In Madison, only SWAT team members have them.
Among Wisconsin’s 10 largest cities, five use the cameras: Milwaukee, Racine, Appleton, Oshkosh and Janesville.
New leadership
Also Tuesday, the council elected new leadership for a year-long term. Ald. Sheri Carter, 14th District, was elected council president and Ald. Syed Abbas, 12th District, was elected vice president.
Ballots for the positions were cast secretly via SurveyMonkey, an online survey company. The vote for Abbas needed to be redone because one council member was unable to cast a ballot due to poor internet connectivity. Abbas would have won even if the ballots were not recast.
Alds. Avrina Martin, 11th District, and Keith Furman, 19th District, also ran for president and vice president, respectively, but did not garner enough votes from the council.
Ald. Max Prestigiacomo, who was elected April 7, was also sworn in as the council member representing the 8th District, which includes a large chunk of UW-Madison’s campus. Prestigiacomo is a freshman at UW-Madison.
The 8th District seat was vacated by outgoing Ald. Sally Rohrer, a graduate student at UW-Madison. She was serving a shortened term after the former alder for the district, Avra Reddy, resigned because of an illness in her family.
Bidar and Ald. Barbara Harrington-Mckinney formerly served as president and vice president, respectively.
A proposal that would have delayed the election of new council leadership for three months failed on a 9-10 vote. Ald. Keith Furman, who proposed the measure, wanted the three-month delay so the council wouldn’t have to worry about a transition during the already uncertain time of the COVID-19 outbreak.
But Ald. Zachary Henak said the term for president is already short and shouldn’t be shortened more. He said he was confident in the applicants’ ability to lead the council.
The council also affirmed around 20 emergency decisions that Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and city staff made in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, including suspending late fees for parking tickets, waiving other late fees and extending some deadlines.
A few council members had originally taken issue with the emergency powers that the council voted to give Rhodes-Conway to respond to the crisis, arguing that she had too much power. But the council on Tuesday unanimously approved the emergency decisions she’s made so far without discussion.
©2020 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
