Pittsfield Council Subcommittee Supports Police Body Cameras
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The subcommittee on Ordinances and Rules is in support of body cameras on the city's police officers.
On Monday, the panel unanimously voted to endorse the Pittsfield Police Department obtaining and implementing body and dashboard cameras with appropriate policy, recognizing the role that such equipment can play in accountability.
The motion was made on a petition from local attorney Rinaldo Del Gallo III that he created after Miguel Estrella was shot and killed by police in late March.
A preliminary investigation by the Pittsfield Police Department has found the responding officers to have been in compliance with established guidelines for use of force. The incident is also under separate investigation by the State Police.
The incident has generated a significant community response including a march that around 200 people attended and passionate testimonies during the majority of last week's City Council meeting.
A number of residents also spoke during this meeting, one of which being Estrella's brother Corey Johnson, who said his family supports body cameras. The girlfriend of Daniel Gillis, who was killed by police in 2017 following a domestic disturbance call, said the responding officers would have been held accountable if they were wearing them.
"The main question is how to get this done and can we get this done now," Councilor at White Peter White said to the subcommittee before the vote.
The councilors recognize that there are a number of additional steps needed to implement a bodycam policy but wanted to start the process. They also recognize that this is not the "end all" solution for related issues within the community.
Police Chief Michael Wynn isn't aware of any opposition to body cameras in the department but spoke to issues that are preventing them.
"As I have stated in this chamber in the past and publicly, neither I nor, or as far as I know, any member of our Police Department has any opposition to implementing a body camera program in the city of Pittsfield. We do, however, have considerable concern about how to properly do it within the legal framework that you find in the commonwealth," he said.
"Following last Tuesday's meeting, I took the time to go access the website of the commonwealth's Body Worn Camera Task Force which was created about the same time the (Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission) was created, and looked at the minutes of their last couple of subcommittee meetings.
"The commonwealth's statewide law enforcement body-worn task force can't even agree on simple issues of consent, and so I'm actually going to agree with many of the speakers tonight that body cameras by large are good for the community and good for our department and our offices but the landscape in the commonwealth, unlike the landscape in say Tennessee, presents a couple of significant challenges."
Wynn said the number one hangup with body cam police is that Massachusetts is a two-party consent in terms of recording and that and "nobody seems to be willing to take a look at that."
This deals with who gets to grant consent, who gets to withdraw consent, and what to do if someone attempts to withdraw consent.
He said the task force's meeting minutes presented two suggestions if consent is withdrawn: turning off the camera or recording with objection and then tagging the video as non-consensual, which struck Wynn as a civil rights violation.
The other issue is reportedly records retention, as body camera footage could record non-criminal and non-medical content that is embarrassing or sensitive and if it could not fit an exemption with public records law the department would be compelled to produce it for people.
"It strikes me as odd that is the police executive, I have to be the one who's making the point that we need to have clear policies to protect the privacy rights of our residents and we need to know what the issue is going to be on two-party consent because that potentially exposes an officer to committing a felony if they don't actively obtain consent," Wynn said.
"It actually rests with the Legislature to fix this problem and for the last 10 years, more than 10 years, the Massachusetts Chief of Police Association has been asking the Legislature to fix these problems and we receive no traction."
He later reported that the body cam commission will likely have draft regulations by June and the regulatory process would be completed by September.
City Solicitor Stephen Pagnotta said, at the present time, it would be a police policy until the state Legislature weighs in and authorizes it.
If a draft resolution is available by June, they would still have to go through the regulatory process, and likely into September.
In their support of body cameras, residents also called for changed policies to prevent future tragedies.
"Just so you all know the Estrella family, we are pro body cameras on police but we definitely don't need the police in sole control of the footage. If we do get body cams, we need to have a real open discussion about who's going to be managing that footage, where that footage is stored and who because there can come a lot of production," Johnson said.
"And I do know that Pittsfield Police Department is famously corrupt and continuously negligent and these officers aren't trained properly and if we're going to start somewhere, it probably should be defunding the police so the last thing I want to do is give them more money to further the negligence."
He called for better support of the city's youth to reduce crime, saying the more crime there is the larger the police budget is.
"I don't think that the system is broken, I think it works exactly the way it was designed," Johnson said.
"It was designed to oppress people that look like me and to put these young quote-unquote, Black kids. Black and brown kids, quote, in jail because we all know you make a lot of money from these incarcerated people, you know what I mean, and it's just sad that this community can't seem to pull together and do what's right."
He also thanked the panel for its acceptance of the petition and for "having human compassion and not setting up roadblocks and just trying to move forward."
Nonprofit Roots and Dreams and Mustard Seeds President Michael Hitchcock spoke against body cameras, saying supporters of Del Gallo's petition signed it in an immense amount of pain after Estrella's death and that body cameras provide a false sense of hope.
Hitchcock believes that because the cameras are from an officer's point of view, the officers will distort the footage by blocking the camera view or angling themselves away from citizens.
"The sad truth is body cams will not and cannot protect people," he said.
The rationale for pretending or believing with body cams will protect people from being murdered by police is that body cams provide an official witness and an objective view of the truth, but as you see in the videos of Daniel Gillis there's an entire neighborhood screaming 'Don't shoot him.'
"What power did witnesses have to stop him from being murdered and how would a camera help? The sad truth is it would not. Miguel Estrella was killed in front of many witnesses, and a camera could not have helped him."
Del Gallo said the only rational reason people have to be against body cameras is the price.
"I think that the only, in my opinion, legitimate objection to body cam footage is actually it's expensive, and it is expensive but the idea that if body cameras were free or dashboard cameras were free, that be we would be worse off within them without them, I think it's something that's complete, it's just a fallacious argument," he said.
"And as I said to my original presentation to the council, to the far extreme of the Overton window."
Del Gallo submitted a model act for regulating the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement from the ACLU to the subcommittee though the members did not have time to review it because it was sent rather late.
Ward 6 Councilor Dina Guiel Lampiasi said it is hard for her to rationalize being against body cameras when those directly impacted feel that a body camera would have changed the outcome.
The councilors also supported a petition from LeMarr Talley requesting an act establishing body cameras for all law enforcement within Berkshire County, recognizing that they only have jurisdiction over Pittsfield.
"I think it's an initiative that will save lives, that will put things in play, but it'll make things work more smoothly and have the police acting more productively in the community and helping the community rise up against certain things," he said.
Talley believes that the city doesn't have to wait for the state to map out a policy for body cameras.
Ward 1 Councilor Kenneth Warren has created two petitions related to body cameras that he will be submitting to the council.
One requests that a draft ordinance based on the ACLU model body-worn camera policy be referred to the subcommittee and approved. The other petition asks that a draft ordinance based on the town of Amherst's modified version of the city of Cambridge ordinance that uses an ACLU model for community control surveillance technologies is referred to the subcommittee and approved.
"I think we need to move forward," Warren said. "I think we need to not unnecessarily delay or put imaginary roadblocks in front of going forward."
Tags: O&R, Pittsfield Police,
