On dashboard cameras, Pierce County gets it right while Tacoma stays in slow lane
We have said it more than once, but it bears repeating: It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Manuel Ellis and countless other people of color dying at the hands of police for local government to start laying down new accountability rules on police use of force.
It also should not have taken a national movement like Black Lives Matter to push police and sheriff departments to utilize technology that’s been readily available for years.
When it comes to 21st Century policing, local governments are feeling immense pressure to play catch-up, so forgive us for not doing cartwheels that the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and Tacoma Police are finally rolling out body-camera programs for deputies and officers early next year.
We can, however, applaud the county for immediately taking the extra step of buying “dash cam” equipment, too.
That’s a good plan, and Tacoma would be wise to follow suit. Police departments across the nation began using dashboard cameras in the early 1990s. Why hasn’t Tacoma?
“Pure oversight,” Mayor Victoria Woodards told us Thursday, saying that city leaders have focused on body cameras for years. While dash cameras aren’t currently budgeted for next year, Woodards said “they’re on our radar.”
Research backs up what Hollywood movie fans already know: Providing multiple perspectives from the same scene can be eye-opening.
There’s also an equity argument: People tend to be more sympathetic to cops when looking at an incident through a first-person body cam perspective, but more detached when watching through a third-person point of view, like a dash cam, citizen cell phone video or building-mounted security camera.
This was validated in a Northwestern University research study last year in which subjects watched body cam and dash cam recordings of the same event but reached different conclusions about an officer’s aggression and culpability.
Certainly dual perspectives don’t come cheap. County Executive Bruce Dammeier has asked the County Council to approve a $5.3 million supplemental budget request to pay for the first year of a body and dash camera package in 2021.
As Dammeier told a member of the Editorial Board, “These cameras aren’t just about the hardware; we have to have money for data retention and public records requests.” He says the cameras will yield a “huge amount of data” and that the county must have the infrastructure to manage it.
Five million seems like a lot of money until you consider the county budgeted close to the same over the last three years maintaining its golf courses. Don’t get us wrong, we appreciate golf, but cameras save lives, and frankly, local governments can’t afford not to have them.
Right now the Tacoma Police Department anxiously awaits results of an independent Manuel Ellis homicide investigation; the State Patrol just completed it and turned it over to Washington’s Attorney General on Thursday.
While in TPD custody on March 3, Ellis died of asphyxiation after uttering an all-too-familiar refrain (“I can’t breathe”); his family subsequently filed a $30 million tort claim against the city.
Initial reports from TPD say that Ellis, 33, acted aggressively when confronted by officers at a Tacoma intersection. A Pierce County deputy on the scene backed up TPD’s story.
But eyewitness accounts conflict with TPD’s narrative; some say Ellis was “literally just walking.” Footage taken from witnesses’ cell phones depict TPD officers beating Ellis. The discrepancy in stories has cast doubt on local law enforcement’s account.
Had the city previously invested in body and dashboard cameras, the totality of images could have served as an impartial witness.
Recording devices can aid law enforcement officers by providing exculpatory evidence; they also can fill in blind spots for members of the public whom these officers are sworn to serve.
Dammeier says he wants to see legislative action mandating that every public safety officer in Washington be outfitted with cameras. Asked if this move was prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement, the executive said, “You bet. We have to stare truth in the face.”
By truth he means that Black people are arrested on a disproportionate basis in every district of Pierce County, according to a recent internal law-and-justice review. As Dammeier told us: “There will be no reckoning of public trust and law enforcement until there’s accountability.”
No doubt Tacoma is hoping to buy some of that accountability by spending $1.2 million for the first year of body cams. TPD spokesperson Wendy Haddow said training is underway and officers will start wearing cameras in the first quarter of 2021.
But to repair damage and dispel mistrust, it would be wise for the city to make an additional investment in dashboard cameras for patrol cruisers, sooner rather than later.
This story was originally published November 14, 2020 at 7:00 AM.