Moonlighting police leave body cameras behind
When police officers in America’s cities put on their uniforms and grab their weapons before moonlighting in security jobs at nightclubs, hospitals, and ballparks, there’s one piece of equipment they often leave behind — their body camera.
That’s because most police agencies that make the cameras mandatory for patrol shifts don’t require or won’t allow body cameras for off-duty officers even if they’re working in uniform, leaving a hole in policies designed to increase oversight and restore confidence in law enforcement.
Police departments contend that they have only a limited number of body cameras or that there are too many logistical hurdles and costs involved. But that argument doesn’t sit well with those who say it shouldn’t matter whether an officer is on patrol or moonlighting at a shopping mall.
“As long as they have real bullets, they need to have the body cameras,” said John Barnett, a civil rights leader in Charlotte, North Carolina, where shootings involving police have put use of the cameras under scrutiny.
An Associated Press survey of the 20 biggest U.S. cities found that nearly all have officers wearing or testing body cameras, but that only five — Houston; San Antonio; San Francisco; Fort Worth, Texas; and San Jose, California — have rules requiring them for uniformed officers working outside their regular hours.
The departments that have body cameras or are testing them, but do not require moonlighting officers to wear them, are New York City; Los Angeles, Chicago; Philadelphia; Phoenix; San Diego; Dallas; Columbus, Ohio; and Charlotte. Denver also has them and is planning to add cameras for off-duty work.
“There shouldn’t be a distinction,” said Lt. Elle Washburn, who oversees San Jose’s body camera program. “You’re still in uniform, still have powers of arrest.”
Just about every police agency makes it clear that officers working in uniform still represent the department and are subject to police rules even when they’re off duty and paid by someone else. Trouble can happen anywhere and anytime, and when it does, there’s little difference between an on-duty and off-duty officer.
Within the past three years, there have been shootings — some fatal — involving moonlighting officers in Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio and Indiana, but the overall number isn’t known because departments don’t keep those statistics.
In Louisiana, a moonlighting officer who wasn’t wearing a body camera was sentenced in March to 40 years in prison for manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old boy following a car chase.
A key piece of evidence came from an on-duty officer’s body camera showing the boy’s father had his hands raised and sticking out his window as the moonlighting officer and a former officer both working as deputy city marshals collectively fired 18 shots. Once the shooting stopped, the footage showed blood on the door and an officer’s realization the boy was in the passenger’s seat.