Surveillance, Accountability, and Police Body-Worn Cameras

We spent the entirety of our March 2022 General Membership Meeting discussing police body-worn cameras and surveillance, with input from Greg Gelembiuk, who served on Madison’s Police Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee, Madison Alder Grant Foster (District 15), and former Alder Rebecca Kemble (District 18), who served on the city’s Surveillance Policy Committee.

Much of the meeting revolved around a resolution authorizing a police body-worn camera pilot program on Madison’s North Side, which could come before the Common Council at its April 19 meeting. The resolution is sponsored by Alders Abbas, Carter, Myadze, Harrington-McKinney, Halverson, and Wehelie.

Importantly, the subject of body cameras is not new. In fact, in April 2020, the city created a Police Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee to study the issue and develop recommendations. The committee issued a final report and model policy in January of 2021. At our meeting, Alder Foster summarized his reading of the the report.

“I think it talks pretty clearly about the uncertainties of the available evidence, points to some things that show there could be potential benefits of a program, points to some things that says there could be potential negatives with the program. The focus of the report, in my reading, seems to be around sort of an underlying hope or expectation that with a thoughtful implementation, the benefits could outweigh the negatives.”

Foster expressed doubts about the current resolution, noting that the Body-Worn Camera Feasibility Review Committee’s Final Report stressed the involvement of the Police-Civilian Oversight Board and the city’s Independent Monitor in the creation and management of a successful body camera program. Foster also suggested that the current Common Council hasn’t discussed the program as a budgetary item, since the funds were carried over from a previous budget.

“At this point I’m feeling really skeptical about pushing for a pilot in this year without having had those budgetary discussions, and especially with the state of our civilian oversight board and the fact that we’re a little bit back to the drawing board when it comes to recruitment for that Independent Monitor,” Foster said.

Greg Gelembiuk, while admittedly once in favor of police body-worn cameras, has been an outspoken opponent of body cameras as a police reform measure more recently. Gelembiuk cited evidence that police body-worn cameras have led to greater criminalization of residents in cities where programs have already been implemented, and noted that anti-racist organizers and advocates of criminal justice reform, such as the Movement for Black Lives, and Michelle Alexander, have come out against police-body worn cameras.

Gelembiuk was very critical of the resolution for a pilot program in Madison, saying, “The body cam committee report said body cams should only be implemented if ten strict preconditions were first met. And instead, the council resolution, the current resolution, basically gives MPD carte blanche.”

Gelembiuk listed a number of examples of these unmet preconditions and described the resolution as “completely premature.”

”None of these things are in place that are all supposed to be in place before any implementation, including a pilot program, begins,” Gelembiuk said.

Finally, former Alder Rebecca Kemble spoke about how her time on the Common Council was characterized by the fight for police accountability, highlighting again the fact that many of these questions are not new, unexplored terrain for the city of Madison. Kemble also continued the theme of unmet obligations, sharing her experience working on the Surveillance Policy Committee to develop a Use of Surveillance Technology ordinance, and raising concerns about city departments’ adherence to the ordinance since it passed in late 2020. The ordinance places strict conditions on departments acquiring new or additional surveillance technology.

“It’s really incumbent on the mayor and the council to put their heads together and really come up with a good process around this that all departments need to follow, and for there to be oversight, for there to be someone monitoring this,” Kemble said, noting that community members’ “privacy concerns are real.”

Kemble also expressed dismay with the focus on body cameras in light of other priorities community members have brought forward when it comes to accountability and oversight of the police, pointing to the “140+ recommendations” in the OIR Group’s 2017 report.

We will continue to share perspectives on body-worn cameras through our social media and newsletters, as well as any information about the upcoming Common Council vote on the resolution authorizing a body cam pilot program.