Helping out cops

Pilot program will test body cameras for local officers working alongside federal authorities.

The U.S. Justice Department decision to allow local police officers to wear body cameras during joint operations with federal authorities is a personal victory for Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who has been pushing for that policy change for more than a year. It’s also a smart, if belated, decision by the administration that should make officers and the public they serve safer.

Attorney General William Barr announced Monday that the Justice Department would begin a 90-day pilot program in at least six large and midsize cities that would for the first time allow federally deputized officers to wear cameras while part of a task force serving arrest or search warrants. If the pilot is deemed successful, the camera ban may end.

“This pilot program takes into account the interests and priorities of all the law enforcement agencies involved in federal task forces,” Barr said. “These are some of the most dangerous jobs in law enforcement, and I am grateful for the sacrifice of those who serve.”

Acevedo is president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents 69 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff ’s departments. The association has spearheaded a national effort to get the Justice Department to drop its objection to local cops wearing body cameras when they’re working with federal agents during drug raids or making other major crime arrests.

Acevedo said his efforts doubled after a botched drug raid in January at a south Houston home left the couple living there dead and five police officers wounded or injured. The chief said he wished members of the narcotics unit conducting that raid had been wearing cameras. One of those officers has since been charged with murder, and another with tampering with government records. Both have retired from the force.

All Houston SWAT team members wear body cameras now, Acevedo said Monday. He said cameras would also become standard equipment for a new narcotics squad created to serve “high-risk” warrants. That unit will become operational in November. City patrol officers were previously equipped with body cameras, he said.

Barr’s announcement comes months after the city of Atlanta said if its cops couldn’t wear body cameras, they would no longer participate in federal task forces with the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals Service, or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Acevedo said at the time that he wanted to avoid making a similar decision by continuing to pressure the Justice Department to change its policy. Now that it has started the pilot program, he said it is important for the federal agency to establish a new policy that is “broad enough and flexible enough” to be tailored for use by individual police departments.

“What we need to know now are the mechanics of the new policy; when you can turn the cameras on and off, who owns the video, what are the rules,” Acevedo told the editorial board.

The chief stressed that video taken by body cameras can be just as valuable to officers whose actions might be called into question as that recording would be for citizens complaining about police conduct. “This is a win for public trust and a win for the men and women in law enforcement,” Acevedo said.

He’s right. The tragic results of the Harding Street raid show how important it is to have a clear record of what transpired whenever police use deadly force. Body cameras can help provide that record; not only to find the truth but to provide information that may be useful in avoiding any repeat of mistakes that were made. Learning from those mistakes could be the difference between life and death.

The chief stressed that video taken by body cameras can be just as valuable to officers whose actions might be called into question as that recording would be for citizens complaining about police conduct.