Undermining Transparency & Accountability, Federal Court Ruling Allows CPD to Disable Body-Worn Cameras after Officer-Involved Shootings
In January of 2024, the Illinois Attorney General moved for judicial resolution in a dispute with the City of Chicago over the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) body-worn camera policy.
Following the cover-up of the CPD’s murder of Laquan McDonald, the federal government implemented a consent decree in Chicago to correct for unsafe, unfair, and unconstitutional policing in the city. The consent decree contains new policies related to body-worn cameras as well as community engagement, firearm pointing, search warrants, officer accountability, and more. Importantly, the consent decree requires continuous recording until the conclusion of any law enforcement-related activity. The Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, implemented across Illinois in 2016, requires the recording of all law-enforcement activities. Recording is critical as lying and collusion among police officers become harder to detect when there are gaps in the record.
The CPD policy that was being contested by the Attorney General orders officers and supervisors to deactivate their cameras for “public safety briefings” and turn them back on when the briefing is complete.
The “public safety briefings” are one-on-one conversations that occur in the aftermath of an officer-involved shooting or related death when the involved officer and their supervisor go over a specific set of questions about the number of rounds fired, in what direction, by whom, the existence and location of perishable evidence, etc. The CPD and the city’s lawyers argued that the deactivation of the cameras for these matters is brief and essential to protect officers and ensure safety. They also argued that requiring these interactions to be recorded would open them up to be used in disciplinary proceedings, which could cause “significant delays” if officers request additional time to respond.
The Attorney General’s Office, on the other hand, argued that ordering deactivation of body-worn cameras during “public safety briefings” violates both the Illinois Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act and the federal consent decree. They asserted that the official end of law enforcement-related activity does not occur until the scene is fully declared safe and secure, which is after the “public safety briefing.” The Attorney General emphasized that turning cameras off creates gaps in the evidentiary record, deprives the public of crucial information, and undermines the transparency that the Illinois Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act and the federal consent decree were meant to ensure.
The federal ruling in State of Illinois v. City of Chicago determines whether the Illinois Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act and the federal consent decree require officer-worn cameras to remain on at the scene of a police shooting or police-shooting death during the initial investigation by a police supervisor.
In November, Judge Pallmeyer ruled that body-worn cameras must be left on during a “street deputy walkthrough,” where police first assess the scene of a police shooting, but officers do not need to leave cameras on during the one-on-one conversation between the involved officer and the reviewing supervisor after the incident.
The federal court’s ruling allowing CPD to disable body-worn cameras after officer-involved shootings undermines transparency and accountability.
Even though “public safety briefings” are typically short, they still present an opportunity for law enforcement to contaminate testimonies and create windows for officer collusion; at the very least, they could give the impression of impropriety by having them unrecorded. Deactivating the cameras during a briefing between the incident and the final securing of the scene is not the continuous recording envisioned by the consent decree and excludes critical law enforcement activity from the record. Exceptions to continuous recording should be limited only to scenarios where safety or victim privacy are concerned.
Chicago Appleseed has noted before that body camera footage is essential for the Office of the Inspector General to overrule disciplinary findings and catch and deter police perjury. Given Chicago’s history of police misconduct, police perjury, wrongful convictions, and costs to the city when people pursue wrongful conviction claims, it’s particularly important for the public to have every opportunity to examine law enforcement actions.