MONROE - In light of recent allegations of police brutality in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, many people around the U.S. have asked for police to wear body cameras for greater transparency. In Green County, the Monroe Police Department is ahead of the curve, as they have had officers wear cameras for about four years.
The Monroe Police Department equips all of its officers with body-worn cameras and can legally film anyone without consent.
Police can film citizens without consent because Wisconsin is one of 38 states along with the District of Columbia that are known as "one-party consent" states, allowing the individual behind the camera to record without informing those being recorded. This works both ways; a citizen could use a smartphone or camera to film a cop during any kind of police contact as long as it does not interfere with an investigation and is outside the borders of police tape at a crime scene.
Individuals still have their right to privacy. Video and audio recordings are not permissible between co-habitants in a home, even if they are husband and wife, without the knowledge of those being recorded.
Monroe police are exclusive in Green County in wearing body-worn cameras, though bigger cities like Madison and Janesville have their police wear cameras. Monroe Chief of Police Fred Kelley said the department came by the cameras with a bit of luck, after putting in for a state Department of Transportation grant that randomly chose MPD.
"We weren't being all that far-sighted than everybody else, we were just in the right place at the right time," Kelley said.
The $4,000 grant helped pay for about nine cameras so every officer on patrol can wear one. Kelley said they did not seek the cameras due to complaints of police brutality. Since they have had the cameras, complaints have typically involved a citizen who felt that an officer was impolite, Kelley said.
"It's rare," Kelley said. "Someone might say, "Oh, the officer was rude to me,' and then looking back on video, they can see themselves in that position and change their tune."
The MPD has nine Vievu recorders that clip to an officer's clothing at about chest level. They are small, black cameras about the shape and size of a cigarette box that have to be manually turned on to record, unlike squad car-mounted cameras, which turn on when the lights and sirens are activated, Kelley said.
"I wish there was something we could invent that the minute an officer draws their firearm, it starts recording," Kelley said. "They're easy to turn on if you think about it, but we don't want to jeopardize anyone's safety, so we tell them (officers) that the first clear thought they have in a situation is the moment to turn it on."
All the video is logged onto a server at the MPD without being edited and can be burned onto DVDs for storage. Kelley said defense attorneys will ask for copies of the video to use in court as potentially exculpatory evidence, but he said regular citizens rarely approach him to view the video. The Vievu cameras will record up to four hours of video but Kelley said most of the circumstances requiring video recording rarely take up that much time.
Kelley said that though the incident in Ferguson, Mo., is tragic, he doesn't think a body-worn camera would have cleared up any of the hazy facts surrounding the case involving officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Michael Brown in August. Kelley said that from what he has learned through the news, the confrontation began at the driver's-side window of Wilson's vehicle, and a forward facing body-worn camera would not have caught what happened. Conflicting eye-witness accounts claim Wilson shot Brown as he had his hands up in surrender, and others say Brown reached inside Wilson's vehicle and attacked him. Wilson was recently in front of a grand jury, which chose not to indict the officer for killing Brown.
The Monroe Police Department equips all of its officers with body-worn cameras and can legally film anyone without consent.
Police can film citizens without consent because Wisconsin is one of 38 states along with the District of Columbia that are known as "one-party consent" states, allowing the individual behind the camera to record without informing those being recorded. This works both ways; a citizen could use a smartphone or camera to film a cop during any kind of police contact as long as it does not interfere with an investigation and is outside the borders of police tape at a crime scene.
Individuals still have their right to privacy. Video and audio recordings are not permissible between co-habitants in a home, even if they are husband and wife, without the knowledge of those being recorded.
Monroe police are exclusive in Green County in wearing body-worn cameras, though bigger cities like Madison and Janesville have their police wear cameras. Monroe Chief of Police Fred Kelley said the department came by the cameras with a bit of luck, after putting in for a state Department of Transportation grant that randomly chose MPD.
"We weren't being all that far-sighted than everybody else, we were just in the right place at the right time," Kelley said.
The $4,000 grant helped pay for about nine cameras so every officer on patrol can wear one. Kelley said they did not seek the cameras due to complaints of police brutality. Since they have had the cameras, complaints have typically involved a citizen who felt that an officer was impolite, Kelley said.
"It's rare," Kelley said. "Someone might say, "Oh, the officer was rude to me,' and then looking back on video, they can see themselves in that position and change their tune."
The MPD has nine Vievu recorders that clip to an officer's clothing at about chest level. They are small, black cameras about the shape and size of a cigarette box that have to be manually turned on to record, unlike squad car-mounted cameras, which turn on when the lights and sirens are activated, Kelley said.
"I wish there was something we could invent that the minute an officer draws their firearm, it starts recording," Kelley said. "They're easy to turn on if you think about it, but we don't want to jeopardize anyone's safety, so we tell them (officers) that the first clear thought they have in a situation is the moment to turn it on."
All the video is logged onto a server at the MPD without being edited and can be burned onto DVDs for storage. Kelley said defense attorneys will ask for copies of the video to use in court as potentially exculpatory evidence, but he said regular citizens rarely approach him to view the video. The Vievu cameras will record up to four hours of video but Kelley said most of the circumstances requiring video recording rarely take up that much time.
Kelley said that though the incident in Ferguson, Mo., is tragic, he doesn't think a body-worn camera would have cleared up any of the hazy facts surrounding the case involving officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed an unarmed black teen named Michael Brown in August. Kelley said that from what he has learned through the news, the confrontation began at the driver's-side window of Wilson's vehicle, and a forward facing body-worn camera would not have caught what happened. Conflicting eye-witness accounts claim Wilson shot Brown as he had his hands up in surrender, and others say Brown reached inside Wilson's vehicle and attacked him. Wilson was recently in front of a grand jury, which chose not to indict the officer for killing Brown.