Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Body cameras rolled out for Boynton Beach police officers
Boynton Beach Police are joining a growing list of law enforcement agencies adding body cameras to their arsenal.
On Thursday, the department’s 86 road patrol officers are expected to be wearing chest-mounted cameras, Police Chief Jeffrey Katz said at a news conference Monday.
“We’re looking forward to this program helping to continue bridging the gaps of trust that have been established over a period of time and to have a better working relationship with the public,” Katz said.
Departments have been adding cameras, both to collect evidence and to
reassure the public in light of highly publicized shootings by police.
Katz said the cameras will increase officers’ accountability and improve their relations with the public.
“It’s important to know that body-worn cameras are not a magic bullet solution. They are a tool, an opportunity to gain additional valuable perspectives of critical situations,” he said.
The cameras come after Boynton Beach resident Corey Jones was shot and killed by Palm Beach Gardens Officer Nouman Raja as he waited at his brokendown SUV at PGA Boulevard and Interstate 95 in October 2015.
Three months after that shooting, Palm Beach Gardens approved funding for police body cameras.
The aunt and uncle of Jones, Sheila and Terry Banks, were at the news conference Monday and said they’re glad to see the city using body cameras, saying it will increase transparency.
“Not only does it protect the community, it protects the police department as well,” Sheila Banks said.
Agencies in Palm Beach County already using body cameras are Delray Beach Police, Boca Raton Police, West Palm Beach Police, Florida Atlantic University Police, Highland Beach Police and Lake Clarke Shores, according to the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission.
In Broward County, the Sheriff ’s Office and cities including Hallandale Beach, Coral Springs and Pembroke Pines have, or are looking into getting body cameras.
The HD cameras are just a few inches long and are simple to turn on.
Boynton Beach’s fiveyear program costs about $500,000 and includes two cameras for each officer, one to wear on duty and another to wear driving to and from work. The cost also includes video storage and hardware upgrades after 2½ years and five years.
Capt. Joe DeGiulio led the body-camera committee for the department. He said a major selling point was the camera’s ability to have a 30-second pre-recording buffer, which means the camera saves 30 seconds of video before the officer presses record.
The feature is useful in the event an officer gets into a situation but forgets to immediately start the recording.
Rather than night vision, the camera has a similar view to the human eye at night so the cameras don’t have an unfair advantage, seeing what the officers can’t see in darkness.
Despite how clear the videos might be, Katz said they don’t always show the whole picture or experience the same stresses faced by the officers who wear them.
“Cameras don’t experience tunnel vision, auditory exclusion and other physiological things that occur in the body under stress and human beings do,” Katz said. “It’s very possible that in the future, we’ll review and evaluate video where there are elements of that video that are clear to us but those things may not have been clear to the person wearing the camera.”
A possible issue with the body-worn cameras, placed around the middle of an officer’s chest, are the blocked views whenever an officer aims a gun.
Despite that, DeGiulio picked the chest-mounted cameras rather than others mounted on lapels and sunglasses.
“When it was on the head, the camera was all over the place,” he said. “It was a good point of view, but it was really unstable video.”
The videos are saved on an encrypted cloud server for 90 days if they don’t contain any evidence. Any videos involving injuries to an officer or citizen, pursuits or crashes and video that could lead to an officer getting sued has to be kept for a minimum of four years, according to a department manual for body worn cameras.
The manual also lists 13 cases when officers should turn on their cameras, including traffic stops, assisting a disabled motorist, vehicle and foot pursuits and suspicious vehicle or person calls.
Katz said any evidence improperly deleted from a camera would be considered felony tampering.
Katz acknowledges that some people aren’t fit to serve as officers and abuse their power, but he labels high-profile cases as an exception.
“My hope is that should a body-worn camera identify one of those needle-ina-haystack type encounters, we don’t disregard the entire haystack,” Katz said.
Boynton Beach Mayor Steven Grant said the cameras are necessary for a city the size of Boynton Beach and that the cost of the program is a small fraction of the city’s approximately $80 million general fund.
“We have a lot of interactions with the public every day so this is going to help ensure the trust of the public with our officers,” he said.