Are Police Body Cameras Racist?

According to a November 14, 2017 report in Newsweek "police body camera's can threaten civil rights of black and brown people".

"Unrestricted footage review places civil rights at risk and undermines the goals of transparency and accountability," said Vanita Gupta, former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and current head of the Leadership Conference, in the report’s introduction.

Because an officer’s memory of an event may be altered by watching body camera footage, doing so will likely alter what officers write in their reports. That, in turn, can make it more difficult for investigators or courts to assess whether the officer’s actions were reasonable based on what he or she perceived at the time of the incident, states the report, "The Illusion of Accuracy: How Body-Worn Camera Footage Can Distort Evidence."

The report advises that police departments institute a "clean reporting" policy, under which officers write an initial incident report before reviewing any footage. Only afterward would they watch the footage and write a second, supplementary report.

"We make the case that in the interests of consistency, fairness, transparency and accountability, clean reporting should be adopted as a standard practice for all police departments with body-worn camera programs," writes Gupta in the introduction.

In April 2018, the president of a local chapter of the NAACP in South Carolina said he was racially profiled by a police officer when he was pulled over for a traffic violation.

"Tonight, I was racially profiled by Timmonsville Officer CAUSE I WAS DRIVING A MERCEDES BENZ AND GOING HOME IN A NICE NEIGHBORHOOD," Timmonsville NAACP President Rev. Jerrod Moultrie said in an April 13 Facebook post, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

"He made a comment that the officer accused him of having drugs in the car,” Timmonsville Police Chief Billy Brown said, according to the station. “He said that his wife and grandchild was in the car. He asked them not to move because the officer looked as if he might shoot them or something. He also made mention that the officer continued to ask him about his neighborhood. Why was he in that neighborhood? And threaten[ed] to put him in jail in reference to something dealing with the registration to the vehicle."

But body camera footage released by the Timmonsville Police Department contradicts the reverend’s claims. It doesn't even appear that a citation was written (?) Take four minutes and check out this example of a police body camera in use.

On April 27th, 2018 a South Carolinian woman was pulled to the side of the road by police in Virginia. Dawn H. W. immediately went live on Facebook after the incident, sharing her experience through tears. “I was just bullied by a racist cop, who threatened to pull me out of the car,” she said about her encounter with the officer, “I was going 70 mph in a 65 zone”. In her 11-minute video, Dawn stressed how traumatic it felt, and how she feared being shot, tasered or “Sandra Blanded”. As well as detailing the encounter, the woman mentioned that she “did a lot of protesting, a lot of fighting in her day, so things like that wouldn’t happen”.

The officer’s body cam recording was then released to the public and it became clear that he acted in a professional manner. In the video, the deputy clarified that the reason he stopped her wasn’t racial profiling, as Dawn H. W. had claimed, but the fact that she was going at 70mph when the speed limit was 55mph. He then gave her a ticket and wished her a safe day. The body camera video can be seen here, posted to YouTube.

On May 8, 2018 the Rialto [CA] Police Department released the video after three black guests threatened to sue, claiming the department had overreacted when a 911 caller wrongly reported a burglary at their Airbnb rental April 30. The police department responded, saying its officers acted "respectfully, honestly and professionally" throughout the entire encounter with the group, which included Donisha Prendergast, whom they said identified herself as the granddaughter of reggae music legend Bob Marley. "The videos speak for themselves," Rialto’s interim police chief, Mark Kling, said at a news conference Tuesday. "Our officers handled the situation with professionalism, dignity and respect." A KCAL 9 News report showing that video can be seen here on YouTube.

And on May 23, 2018 an article and video in the Tribunist showed that a drunk driver who accused an officer of sexual assault lied! DPS says Trooper Daniel Hubbard saw a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu driving south on Interstate 35 in Ellis County near U.S. 287 and the car was stopped for a traffic violation. Based on the traffic stop, the driver was arrested for driving while intoxicated. She was taken to the Ellis County jail and charged with DWI. Following the arrest, allegations were made against Hubbard. DPS says it took those allegations seriously, immediately reviewing the traffic stop and arrest. It ultimately concluded there was no evidence to support the allegations that any wrong-doing occurred.

Accusations of police abuse of power are currently widespread. In a few cases the claims seem to have some merit. However, in more and more of these cases it seems that the accusations are baseless. It would appear that we have another case of the latter following the release of body cam footage in Texas earlier yesterday (May 23, 2018).
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Body cameras create a record of what occurred during a police contact. The body camera itself cannot be bias or racist, it just records what is happening in front of it. "The Illusion of Accuracy: How Body-Worn Camera Footage Can Distort Evidence" report provides additional insight into the use of police body cameras, and I believe that this report is worth reading. However, as we have seen in the above examples - recorded by police body cameras - accusations against police officers are often false and having body camera video available can show what actually happened during a police contact.