Two years ago, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, opening a national dialgoue about use of force and whether police should wear body cameras.
For the Juneau Police Department, the question wasn’t whether to wear body cameras; it was already trying to choose which model to buy. The department has been field-testing different camera models for at least four years.
“This has been in the works here for years and years and years,” Police Chief Bryce Johnson told the Empire Friday afternoon. “We’ve been working toward this for some time.”
Now, the department is closer than ever to getting body cameras. At its next regular meeting, scheduled for Nov. 7, the Juneau Assembly will decide whether to fund the initiative.
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded JPD with a grant of about $25,000, a part of the Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program. That grant will help JPD purchase 40 body cameras. In order for the department to access those federal funds, it has to put up nearly $27,000 of its own, which is where the Assembly comes in.
JPD doesn’t currently have that amount of money readily accessible in its budget. It will cover roughly $7,500 of the $27,000 match in personnel costs. The department is asking the Assembly to appropriate about $19,400 in asset forfeiture funds to cover the rest.
Asset forfeiture funds are illegal monies JPD has seized during arrest and operations.
“Usually what we’re talking about here is illegal drug money,” Johnson said. “These funds are designed to pay for things like this. This is what we’re supposed to be doing with them.”
The federal government has strict rules about what asset forfeiture funds can and can’t be used for. For example, they can’t be used to fund capital improvement projects, but JPD has used them to fund its school resource officer program and its K-9 unit.
Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove told the Empire Friday that the City Manager’s Office will be recommending that the Assembly pass the appropriation ordinance.
“From where Rorie (Watt, the city manager) and I stand, this seems like a reasonable thing to do,” she said.
Chief Johnson has been researching body-camera policies for some time now, and he said he has found that people tend to “behave better” when they know officers are wearing body cameras. He also said that police agencies that have implemented body-camera policies have noted a reduction in citizen complaints and instances in which officers use force.
For these reasons, Johnson said that the benefits of body cameras outweigh some of the issues that have made some police officers hesitant to support them. Privacy — or the potential lack thereof — is one of the biggest concerns police officers have with body cameras, Johnson said. Going to the bathroom, for instance, becomes a challenge for officers who are required to wear body cameras that are constantly recording.
The chief is hopeful that other police forces already using body cameras — such as the Kenai Police Department — will come up with solutions to some of the privacy problems by the time JPD officers get body cameras of their own.
“We’re not on the cutting edge here; we’re not blazing the trail,” he said. “We are three or four years behind, but that’s where we want to be. We can learn from other agencies’ struggles.”
Even if the Assembly appropriates the asset forfeiture funds JPD needs to buy its body cameras, Johnson said the force is likely about a year away from actually wearing them. The department still has to finalize its camera selection and firm up its body-camera policy. But whether it’s next month or next year before body cameras are a part police officers’ uniforms, Johnson said they are inevitably coming.
“Body cameras are the future,” Johnson said. “They’re coming whether we get them now or later. It’ll be like wearing a ballistic vest, or carrying a radio.”
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
