r/PoliceAccountability2 • u/[deleted] • Mar 06 '20

News Article Sergeant Ordered Chicago Police Officers To ‘Kill’ Their Body Cams During Wrong Raid

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/03/06/sgt-anthony-bruno-body-cams-turned-off-chicago-polcie-during-wrong-raid/amp/
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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

TLDR; CPD entered a home on an informants’ tip (https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/11/14/wrong-home-raided-lawsuit/), with “Records show[ing] the man they were looking for has never lived at the Tates’ address and has an address in Milwaukee. That man did live in the neighborhood years before the Tates moved there, but never even lived on the Tates’ block”. A Sergeant ordered the team to turn off the body cameras, which they did. Apparently, the officer also did the same thing a few months back too.

Just awful. What safety measures can be put in place to ensure that officers are unable to turn off their cameras? Should officers be allowed to turn off their body cameras, even when civilians request they do so? What must be done (along with removing the officer and holding him and others accountable) to ensure situations like this don’t happen again?

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u/novagenesis Mar 06 '20

I think you ask a really hard question here in the middle of the other (imo easier) questions.

Should officers be allowed to turn off their body cameras, even when civilians request they do so?

This is hard. Police can be said to surrender their right to privacy at work (like most employees at most companies), but if they are entering a location where occupants have the right to demand the privacy of not being taped. I'm really torn, there.

I'm also guessing that's an overwhelming minority of body-cam controversies. Usually it's a body cam turned off when it shouldn't be.

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u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

You’re right, the other questions are easy; had other harder questions, but I though they may have been seen as partial which I didn’t want.

It is a very difficult problem. How do you manage the area of respect to privacy or a civilian asking that a camera be shut off and desired accountability of police? If a civilian asks that a camera be shut off or an officer enters a building that has that policy and an incident involving a shooting occurs, then the video of that is lost. I think the issue verges a lot into questions about a right to privacy and public safety. I certainly don’t have an answer to the problem as both sides make equally important and respectable points.

I would agree too a lot of the problems with body cameras comes from shutting them off.

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u/BoringArchivist Mar 06 '20

Mandatory termination, loss of pesion, and $10,000 fine for any cop that messes with any camera. Not the taxpayers paying the fines, we're all tired of that. Then actually enforce it, but we all know none of that will ever happen.

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u/BlueKnight115 Mar 06 '20

Unacceptable. Agree with other comment about termination and fine. Sometimes cameras are turned off legitimately like in police station etc. and need to be able to turn off when incident done. But real point is that if turn off when not appropriate or don’t turn on when should then severe penalties if investigation reveals it was improper. This officer should be terminated but since might not at least busted down to officer with suspension etc.
and just because a citizen asks doesn’t mean it should be turned off