MINNEAPOLIS _ Minneapolis police officers are frequently failing to turn on their body-worn cameras, even after new Chief Medaria Arradondo issued a directive mandating their use in all public encounters, a City Council member said Monday.
That was among the findings of a two-month audit of the department's body camera program, according to Council Member Linea Palmisano, who called the results of the 24-page report "damning."
"There's some people who never have it on," said Palmisano, after reviewing the report over the weekend. "This is a very expensive program and there isn't oversight of this, and there isn't governance."
The report also found that there is no clear chain of command for reprimanding officers who fail to activate their cameras, Palmisano said.
The audit findings are expected to be presented to the full council Tuesday morning.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Arradondo said that, much like with the adoption of dashcam videos and Tasers, it may take some time before the devices are universally accepted.
"There's still a lot of work to be done, and we're still learning," said Arradondo, adding that he hadn't yet read the audit report.
Newly released department statistics showed that the number of body camera videos recorded by officers jumped to 55,729 in the month after the chief's new policy was announced, from the 23,876 videos in the month before the change. Similarly, the number of hours of video more than doubled, from 2,521 to roughly 9,060, the statistics show.
Two weeks after the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond in a south Minneapolis alley, Arradondo announced that officers must activate their cameras when responding to any call, traffic stop or self-initiated activity. Previously, officers were given some discretion.
The policy change was announced after it was revealed that the officers involved in the Damond shooting, Mohamed Noor and Matthew Harrity, did not have their cameras activated at the time of her death. The police squad's dashboard camera also was not running.
State law requires law enforcement agencies that use body cameras to arrange for an independent audit of the programs every two years, starting in 2018.
City officials announced earlier this year that they would conduct an expanded audit of the body camera program and report their findings back to council members on Sept. 27. Instead, the audit results are expected to be released more than a week early. Among other things, the audit examined the equipment and software police use, how they use it and studied how consistently officers have turned on cameras. While there was some improvement after the policy change, departmentwide camera use remained inconsistent, Palmisano said, citing the audit's conclusions.
"I guess we didn't get to discipline, because discipline never seems to happen," she said Monday.
Department officials have said they are working to install new technology on squad cars that will automatically turn on the cameras whenever an officer flips on the vehicle's emergency lights.
Palmisano said that she was assured in a meeting Monday with department officials that police supervisors are undergoing training on how to more closely monitor officers' camera usage.
"I don't have a lot of confidence in that given what we see in this report," she said.
