Madison has devoted three separate committees over the last seven years to the study of the cameras, with the most recent one issuing a caveat-laden recommendation in January to adopt them. The council accepted the committee's report in July, but only after barely voting down an effort by nine of the 20 council members to reject the cameras.
Now camera supporters are coming back before the council with a measure that would spend $83,000 from this year's capital budget to buy 48 cameras for a pilot program in the city's North Police District next year, with the police department covering the approximately $55,000 needed for staff time to process camera footage.
Only the department's SWAT team has used body cameras to date. In the years Madison has been waffling on whether to deploy the cameras departmentwide, their use elsewhere has steadily increased, with half of all U.S. departments having adopted them by 2016, according to a 2018 U.S Justice Department report. Among departments such as Madison's, with between 500 and 999 personnel, about 80% had acquired the cameras and about 63% were using them to some degree.
A state Department of Justice survey conducted late last year found that about 63% of the 434 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that answered questions about body cameras use the devices to some extent. Madison's police chiefs, including current Chief Shon Barnes, and its police union have long supported the adoption of body-worn cameras.
Cameras provide direct evidence of what happens in police encounters in an era when police-reform activists are criticizing police treatment of Black people, the mentally ill and other disadvantaged populations.
But in Madison, activists have lodged a range of objections to the technology, including that the footage they collect could be used against people in the country illegally, that more money shouldn't be spent on a city service — policing — that already eats up a large proportion of municipal budgets, and that the footage collected by the cameras can put suspects in an unfairly unfavorable light.
Amid research that has been mixed on whether the cameras help reduce the incidence of police use of force and complaints against police, or increase trust between police and citizens, police critics have also indicated that cameras simply don't help get them what they want.
"The real question is, who has the power to interpret the footage and, frankly, who has the power to make a determination of wrongdoing?" M. Adams, the co-executive director of Madison social justice nonprofit Freedom Inc., said at a meeting of the city's most recent body camera committee last year. The group is a staunch advocate for defunding police and eliminating incarceration and cash bail.
Cameras "do not produce the outcomes we want," Adams said.
Over the years the city has also passed up opportunities to apply for federal funding for body cameras for patrol officers, and in 2017 the department rejected an offer from Taser International to outfit officers with free body cameras for a year, arguing the city couldn't cover other costs associated with the technology.
Council President Syed Abbas, who is sponsoring the pilot project resolution, said he isn't recommending the proposal be referred to any of the city's many committees because the issue has been studied enough.
"Deferring is just delaying," he said, but that doesn't mean other council members can't ask for referrals. He said the measure could be back before the council as early as Jan. 4.
He's cautiously optimistic he and other sponsors have the votes to pass it, pointing to the 10-9 vote in July against the motion to reject body cameras.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who has generally enjoyed the support of Madison's most progressive residents, has steadfastly refused since her election in 2019 to take a definitive position on police body cameras.
"The mayor does not have a comment on this issue," Deputy Mayor Katie Crawley said Friday in response to a question about the mayor's position on Abbas' resolution, including whether she would consider vetoing it.
The nine council members who voted in favor of the July measure opposing the cameras — Alds. Juliana Bennett, Brian Benford, Nikki Conklin, Jael Currie, Yannette Figueroa Cole, Grant Foster, Keith Furman, Patrick Heck and Arvina Martin — also did not respond to requests for their positions on Abbas' resolution.
Under the proposal, the pilot's success — even if it gets the green light from the council — could depend on the city's level of crime next year.
Because the Police Department has agreed to use money in its already-approved 2022 operating budget to cover staff time related to processing footage, "their ability to do so depends on the number of extraordinary events (homicides, shots fired, protests, etc.) that require overtime and other unknown events that may occur in 2022," according to the fiscal note attached to Abbas' resolution.
"An appropriation to MPD may be necessary later in the year to cover these costs," it says.
Because that appropriation would adjust the current year budget, it would require approval by a 15-vote supermajority of the City Council, Abbas said.
© 2021 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
