 Hi, welcome to Inside 1331. We're at 1331 Cherokee, which is Denver Police Department headquarters. And this is a new show where we're going to ask tough questions, questions that you might not hear the answers to anywhere else. We're going to take experts from within the police department and ask them really difficult questions about pressing issues that other people have been asking. And today, we're lucky enough to have with us Commander Megan Dodge, who's in charge of the... Operation Support Division. Operational Support. But what you're here to talk about with me today is body cameras. It's been a hot topic. Anybody who's been paying any attention knows that this has actually been an international story. And Chief White was on the news in China, in Japan, in Switzerland, as well as a lot of local and national TV shows. So you're fully aware of all that. As I like to say, now have the most famous eye in law enforcement in America. Okay, you ready for the tough questions? Sure. Should body cameras be turned on all the time? No. Okay, why? There are multiple reasons. First is the fact that not every contact with the public should be recorded. I think that we have done a good job with developing a trust with our community. Sometimes cameras can have the negative effect of that. Can you give me an example? For instance, if somebody were to wave down an officer to tell them, hey, there's a trouble house in my neighborhood. I'd like you to go take a look at it and, you know, there seems to be suspicious activity, et cetera, et cetera. Those are things that people haven't called in on. They've waved somebody down. They've tried to talk to them about it on an off-the-record kind of avenue. So those are some balancing of privacy versus public good. And you and I actually have talked about this. I had a really interesting conversation with you and our internal affairs commander. And I was thinking about, I think you know this, I used to walk through Civic Center Park every single day. And there was a, and I'd talked to a lot of the folks there and they'd come up and talk about their problems and try to get some help and, you know, police stuff. And I remember this gal, and she was probably in her early 20s. And it took about six to eight months before she trusted me enough, but she pulled me aside one day into the park. And she proceeded to tell me a story about how her kids had been taken away from her by social services and some of the struggles she was having and how hard it was for her to get an ID and she needed some drug and alcohol treatment. And after talking to you, it really occurred to me, I don't know that she would have ever had that conversation with me on camera. And I would have not had the opportunity to help somebody. We have a large variety of contacts with people that the public never realizes we have. They only envision a traffic stop or a call. An enforcement action of types. So, you know, within our policy we've also given some leeway to officers. For instance, if a victim of a sex assault wishes to not be recorded at that time, we're going to abide by those wishes if it's feasible, if it's safe for everybody involved. We would never want technology to inhibit the ability for us to do the right thing by the public. What would you say to people who say, well, that's just your excuse to get away with bad stuff? Well, currently we don't have anything on and we have a very good department with our officers. So, the fact of having the video only adds a layer of comfort to some individuals as well as legitimacy to others. And I think that's interesting. I mean, one of the points that I came up with, and this is kind of a statement, not really a question, is that this is the greatest advancement in transparency in my 25 years in law enforcement. And yet there just seems to be this, I think, small group of people who absolutely now are attacking our use of body cameras because it just seems like they either don't like us or don't trust us. Well, in addition to the things we just talked about, the amount of cost for storage of all that data that really has little to no use, as well as the privacy concerns. We're trying to weigh privacy. And when you say no use, so you and I talked about this. Driving. What's the point of me recording me driving around or me having lunch? Yeah. Or writing a report. There's many times. I mean, and our officers deserve a level of privacy as well. I mean, I would think that no one would argue the fact that officers should be recorded using the restroom or making a private phone call on their lunch break. Those are times when our officers still should, we trust our officers. This is just one more level of having the public trust as well. I think you bring up a good point and officers are humans too. And they have, you know, wives and girlfriends and husbands and kids and doctors. I talked to my doctor today if you can't tell I have a cold. I shouldn't have to record that conversation for anybody to come review. Exactly. So let me ask you this. So what is the policy as it stands today? When does an officer have to record? Well, our policy, it's all encompassing. The majority of citizen contacts the officer will record. And when you say that, what about the situation in the park? Right. With rare exception, for instance, if, again, there is that discretion, if an officer believes that having the camera on will actually inhibit them from doing their job, they're given the option to turn it off after they've made an announcement on the camera to say, I'm now turning off my camera. And why? And why? So there's a recording. Absolutely. Okay, great. People say that it's not effective to allow officers discretion. You think it's... We have a lot of discretion in law enforcement in general. So, again, we do trust our officers. So this is just one more layer to gain further trust from our community with what our officers are doing. Okay. How about accountability? What's in place? Let's just say that I am a rogue officer and I want to do something inappropriate and I turn off my camera. What is the department put into place to deal with a situation like that? We are beginning spot checking of data usage. So, for instance, if an officer is... If the norm is this and we find officers who are down here, we're going to go and make sure that they understand the policy, make sure that there aren't just various reasons as to why they wouldn't have had it on if they did a shift in the hospital. That's not going to be on. There are some areas where there would be explanations for that. If it comes up in an internal affairs case as well, then those are items where we take a look and see is this a pattern of behavior or is it a failure to understand the equipment? Is it a failure to understand the policy? We are given a great opportunity with a six-month pilot to iron out some of the things that officers are seeing in the field with their equipment as well as the policy. Let me ask you the hard question. That's what this show is about. What about somebody who is playing games? What about somebody who is doing the wrong thing and they're trying to avoid being detected on camera? Under that scenario that you're giving me, the small piece is whether or not they have their camera on, because if you have an officer doing that, the camera is the least of our worries. It's the actions that are happening, which is why they don't want them to be recorded. As you told me in another conversation, we have mechanisms in place to deal with that. Absolutely. Then you would. Is there any oversight outside the police department? During the complaint intake, any time that there is a complaint where there is video on-office or video, that's included with the case file. The Office of the Independent Monitor will have access to all that video in order to view the actions of the officer, whether it falls within, without a policy, and as well as does it give merit to the complaint or refute the complaint? I think another thing people forget is that internal affairs cases, once they're complete, are available to the public. So that video would also be available. Could very well be. As evidence of the case, depending on some other things we're going to get into. Exactly. But in general, you would say, if it's purely misconduct, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Another issue that comes up a lot is how long video is held. And what I mean by that is, how long do we store that data? Right. And in my reading, I see that there's usually different levels depending on what the video is for. So if I am running after a bank robber and it becomes evidence in a case, that gets held for a different amount of time than if I'm just driving around and I accidentally hit the button. Correct. What's our policy? So anything that's not associated with the case. A criminal case. A criminal case is an internal affairs case because those would be maintained within internal affairs. Okay. Those do not go away either. Everything that's involved with the case is held based upon the retention laws that that particular retention schedule. Like any other evidence. Absolutely. Like any other evidence. Anything that is not, so just a conversation with somebody that I'm not sure is going to turn out well, that something seems hinky and I turn it on. Those would be held 365 days. If it's not in line with having a case, then they're deleted at that point. And that's a long time. It is a very long time. There's an agency in Colorado that does seven days. Yes. And it seemed like the average was between 30 and 60. Right. We understand that complaints can come forth at a later time. So we wanted to make sure that we maintained that for any internal affairs cases, as well as sometimes you have things that you're not readily sure of what you have on scene, and then they come in later. And it was in fact a case. But that's really a big commitment on this department's part. Absolutely. Wouldn't you say? What is the cost? I mean, people don't realize they think, oh, you can go get a $60 camera at Amazon. Why doesn't the department do that? Why is it so expensive? Right. This technology is different, for instance. It's a technology that is specifically made for law enforcement. So yes, you could very quickly go get a camera pin and put it in your uniform and record things. However, a couple of things that make that where it's not viable in law enforcement. Number one, that video can be altered. So there would be, yes, there are forensics that can be done to prove that it wasn't. However, if we had to do that on every case, that cost alone could be astronomical as well. In addition, what we have, all of that video is watermarked. So it's watermarked. Yes, it's watermarked and recorded, so admissible into court. So that's the difference between the two of those, as well as if you had a personal recording device, there's some manipulation that has to take place in order to get that off the device. So in order to limit the overtime cost and make it... Which is very expensive. It is very expensive. You don't want to pay 700 officers for an hour every day to download video. Yes. Okay. So the program is $1.5 million for the first year in 2015. That cost includes 800 cameras, as well as storage. And what's the camera cost? Roughly $1,000, and it depends on the manufacturer. So is the storage by camera or is it just as a whole? We buy a certain amount of storage. It's a certain amount of storage. Okay. It's out there. Yes, I don't know. Is this in a... No, is this in a server? Do we keep it? The cost of having a server is pretty expensive. So the way that this technology works is a cloud-based server. So somebody else has got our data. Somebody else has... Well, they're holding our data for us. They do not have access to our data. So they are the ones who are managing the server, et cetera. Okay. So I want to touch on something. You just said access to our data. That's another thing that comes up quite a bit. Who can access this video? Can the officer delete it? No. Can the officer edit it? No. Can I go get it? No. So who can get it? Who can watch it? How does that work? So currently under the pilot, what we have limited it to is the detectives who obviously need it for their cases. They have access. Internal Affairs has access. The CRO office, the Conduct Review Office has access to it. Some people who don't know what that is, Conduct Review is the people who make a determination about guilt or innocence on a complaint. Correct. Okay. So they have that as well as my office of the civilians as well as a few of our detectives who have access to help with that. And that's read-only access. That's correct. Who can delete it? Chief of Police. Okay. So it's pretty limited. It is limited. Can anyone edit it? No. It's impossible. There's no way. And that was going back to what we were talking about before. What makes this different than say a camera pen is the fact that there is no manipulation. You dock the camera as well as the battery piece as soon as it's docked, the docking station grabs all the data that the officer has taken during their shift and it uploads it into the cloud. Okay. So there's nothing that is done at that point. So that should alleviate some people's concerns about us trying to edit out some thing that we don't care for. There's just no ability to do that. You also told me that there's an audit trail. Can you explain what that is? Yeah. So for every recording that hits the cloud, what is available to us within the software that the manufacturer has is the ability to see who has accessed, how many times they have accessed, meaning watched. Have they shared it with anyone? Where did it go to? How many times did they do that? All of those things, any time you click on it, there is an audit trail that shows who accessed it, how they accessed it, where they accessed it, all of those things. Have you in the pilot program watched that? Have you seen that happen? Oh, absolutely. You've seen the audit trails? Yes. Yes. This isn't like IRS emails that disappear? No. Okay. It is definitely not. All right. Should anyone in the public be able to come in at any time and say, I want to watch this video? I know that the cops were at my neighbor's house yesterday. I've had a fight with them for long years. I even have a lawsuit in small claims court, and I want to see that video. I think it supports what we've been saying for a long time. So we recognize that people knowing that there's video there is going to want to look at it. However, as a department, we try to balance between transparency and privacy. So there are considerations that go into effect that make it where showing video to the general public is ill-advisable without it being vetted first. So a lot of people, when they first hear your answer, they think, oh, this is just a great way to hide. This is the cops trying to hide bad behavior. Can you give me an example of why we wouldn't want to show video that may appear, by the way, to anybody other than a few people, totally benign and... Right. There's a multitude of things that we specifically looked at, juveniles, for instance. And the law is very specific about what you can do with juveniles. Yes. So juveniles can't be released through us, so that's something we have to be concerned about. Sex assault victims is another thing that we need to be concerned about. Commonly called the rape shield law. Absolutely. The fact that we, in law enforcement, go into people's private homes. And so when we're in somebody's private home and we're recording the interaction, it may be mundane to everyone else. However, that's your private place. If you've called officers there, that should be held secure. There's pieces of that, I think the example I gave you yesterday is a domestic violence victim, or stalking incident where somebody could falsely call officers in, we go check out, make sure everything's good, and then that person would be able to go see someone. So we've really become a party to a stalking situation. Absolutely. So those are things. So let me throw another one at you. I'm stopped on the highway and I don't think the officer did the right thing and I want to see the video. Or I want to see the video to see if it really showed me going through a red light. Right. So the way that we currently do any type of weighing is through Harris versus the Denver Post. Which is a case. It's a case law. It's a case law about open records in Colorado. Absolutely. So we have an attorney that takes a look at each of those requests for records that we have to say whether or not it should or shouldn't be released and why it should or shouldn't be released. So it might get released. Absolutely. That's what you're saying. There's no blanket that no this will not be released. Right. Okay, but there are some we won't, right? Somebody's house. Correct. Children. Sex cell victims. We've used this fairly similarly with our Halo program. Did you run? Right. Could you just tell people what that is? Yeah. So it's the big bulbs that you see all over mounted on the city. What they are are cameras that allow us to make sure that we help with the prevention and prosecution of crime. We use that video surveillance to make it into evidence for various crimes that detectives need and provide safety to the citizens. But the difference between the Halo and the body cameras is Halo is not privy to private residences. Or sound. And sound. So there is a difference between the two of these technologies. I think another thing you hit on that's really important to emphasize is that the police get called when something's wrong, usually the worst day of your life. Right. And should that always be available to everyone to see. Right. And really we do that right now even with Halo camera at Civic Center Park, right? We wouldn't necessarily just release that video unless there was a strong public need. Right. Absolutely. What would you say to people who say, well, why do you get to determine the strong public need? I don't. It would be the attorney who takes a look at it based upon the law. Yes. Okay. So there really is no blanket. There's just some hard rules on the legal areas. Right. Okay. There are some people who are concerned about the software, facial identification, facial recognition. Is that part of the pilot program for body cameras or Halo? No. Not even something that is part of the software that this- I mean people have talked to us about it but it's certainly not something we're doing. Yeah, I know. They don't have to worry about facial recognition software at this point. Do we have a policy in Denver that says officers have to tell someone they're being recorded? No, we don't. We are not a two-party state. Right. We're a single consent state. Correct. Which is the law you're talking about. Right. Which means for the viewers that in Colorado you can record someone else without their permission as long as one person in the recording knows they're being recorded. Correct. But should we? Should we tell people what's your thought about that? Where are we at with that? Why do we do what we do? Right. So obviously we're not covertly recording anyone. Because there's a visible camera. It's either on your collar or on glasses. So there's nothing covert about that. People know that there's a camera on this officer. There has been times that other agencies have seen and we have stressed this in the training that if you believe that it will help diffuse a situation, let the person know you're being recorded. So there's nothing that says an officer can't do that. Absolutely not. We just don't require it. Right. There also could be times when telling somebody that it's actively being recorded could actually incite it. So we give that piece of judgment up to the officer to know the tone and the totality of the call that they're on. So I guess another way to say that is we want them to have the discretion to manage that situation based on their training and experience. Not the technology managing the situation. And not force the camera to change the dynamic. Correct. Okay. So this is another big issue when it comes to body cameras and one of the questions, and this is a lot of times the officers themselves that are asking these questions. Do we have random checks to see how an officer is treating people? No. No. We don't have that obviously during the pilot. We don't have that. What we do have in place is, for instance, if an officer comes up on a PAS review. Which is an early warning system that we have to try to identify behavior from an officer before it gets to the point where we're reading about him in the newspaper. Right. So if an officer comes up with a PAS review, then that gives the sergeant, lieutenant, commander the ability to take a look and do spot checks on the work that the officer's in. And the intention is to what? The intention is to make sure that we catch any concerning behavior prior to it becoming an issue. Okay. If I get a contract with a bar outside of my normal shift, we call that off-duty. That's the term we use. And I'm paid by the bar to basically be present and enforce Denver's laws while I'm at the bar. Right. Is that a fair representation? Yes. And a lot of those situations, the reason the officers get paid is because it's a more volatile spot. It can be. A nightclub or, you know, a lot of alcohol, things like that. So there are a lot of incidents off-duty. What are we doing about body cameras off-duty? So right now during the pilot, we are not using them for off-duty. Obviously, this is not a technology that's department-wide. So to give some employers the benefit without others, what we felt was probably not the best way to utilize the tech space. Do you see this coming where everybody will have these off-duty? We don't really know at this point. That's something we're going to look at. Yeah. Something that needs to be looked at. Is it fair to say that would be really expensive? It would be very expensive. And when I say very expensive, what are we talking? Well, it depends. If we're holding any of that information for at least 365 days, that can add up very quickly releasing that space on that server. So then the question becomes... Like the hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? It could. It absolutely, absolutely could. And I'm not saying that to say we shouldn't do it. I'm just saying you can't just make that decision. But many questions have to be asked as to who encouraged that cost and how we manage that and... Is it worth it? Exactly. Right? It's also a cost balance. It could be. It might be. I mean, it's not something we have said no to. Yes. You and I also had a discussion. I think a lot of the public doesn't necessarily think about this. You might be driving down the street. In fact, I know all police officers I know, at least in Denver, have had this happen. You pull over a car, everything's going great and actually, you know, the guy runs away. He just takes off or he takes off running right at you or some just totally abnormal behavior that now you have to deal with. So that in those kind of situations, we talk a lot about officer safety. And the first thing that goes through your mind as a cop is what? Go take care of it. I got to take care of it. Yes. How does officer safety come into play with the body cameras? Obviously, we have taken great stride within the policy to make sure that officers can get used to almost on every situation, at least at the beginning, activating that camera. So, like any new habit that you're trying to learn, it first, it becomes more of a conscious thought versus what we would like to call muscle memory. But is it fair to say that you don't expect officers to put their safety in there to make sure that they're turning this on? No, absolutely not. And so some of the training that we have had, for instance, if there was a scenario that you're just driving back to the station, getting ready to end your day and a fight happens right in front of you, spills out into the street, we want you to go take care of that. So, it would be idea if you hit the button and went out and handled the situation at hand. However, the benefit of this equipment is if an officer doesn't and just jumps in there to handle what they need to do, because we also, because of the safety of the public, we don't want them fiddling with technology without taking care of what it is that they're truly hired to do. So, there is a 30-second buffer within this equipment that as soon as you hit the record button, even after the situation's over, if the officer has the wherewithal to remember to hit that button, the 30 seconds prior will be recorded as well, video only. So, that's kind of passively recording all the time. Absolutely. After every 31 seconds, it drops off and starts in recycles. Yes. Okay. What if somebody's going to talk to a victim of crime, any crime, and they've got the body camera on? Do they have to have consent of the person before they take a video statement? No, they don't. Obviously, we've asked the officers to use their best discretion of it. In no way would we ever want technology, again, to inhibit our job, which is investigating and preventing crime. So, if it any... We don't want to jeopardize cases. We don't. For the sake of having video. Okay. Are officers required to document incidents where they did use video? Like in other words, maybe I didn't like the video very much and I'm hoping it just flies into the radar. Am I supposed to tell somebody that I did video? Was that documented somewhere? Yeah. Every piece of video that an officer records in the field, they need to tag it with the CAD number that is associated with that call or with that incident. Yes. So, there's a number that comes... So, there's an incident number for everything an officer does. So, every time an officer activates that video, it should be tagged with that incident number, whether or not there was a case, arrest, paperwork, anything. So, the system is designed to document that it was used. Absolutely. If you tag it, it doesn't keep it from being within the system. So, even if an officer were to forget to tag it with the case number, the date, time and officer badge number is stamped on every single piece of video. All right. So, one of the last issues that's brought up a lot, are officers able to make copies of their own videos and then use them for things or put it on their Facebook page, things like that? No. No. Absolutely not. Again, it's not the property of the officers. It's the property of the department and citizens in so much as an officer can't decide to photocopy it, video it and then subsequently put it on a Facebook page. So, we have that within the policy. We also have that within, you know, on crime scenes, et cetera. There's no place for any of that. Otherwise, it wouldn't be vetted under the way that we already have in place for citizens to make requests of that footage. So, you've been kind of married to this project now for at least six months, been taking up a majority of your time and you've been to public meetings, you've heard what people are saying, you've watched it in action. What's your take on this? What do you think? Our body camera's really a good move forward. Is this more positive, more negative? What's your take? So, my take on this is that we are still in the infancy, I believe, of this technology. And you mean Denver or the world? Yeah. This is something, even according to Taser, this is at the innovation stage of technology. They haven't reached market saturation even. So, this is very new. There's quite a few things for all law enforcement to learn on policies, procedures, case law, et cetera. The, I believe that it is a positive thing and it's something that's going to have to continue to grow. Being on the forefront of any innovation, we have to be willing to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. And that was our purpose and intent behind having a six-month pilot that Chief White made sure that we did before we rolled out across the city. We wanted to take our lessons learned in a six-month pilot within District 6 and learn from that, make changes, find out what works, what doesn't work and then end up with the best product for Denver. But if you were the chief, would you do this? Is this the right thing to do? I think it is. I think it is a way to add to the trust our community, the majority of our community already has. And it just adds another layer for officers to do their job and prove that what they're doing is the right thing to do. And those that aren't, it gives us an ability to hold them accountable. I want to thank Commander Dodge for coming in and being the first person to really sit in that hot seat and answer questions. If you have any questions or areas of the law or what we do that you would really like us to dig in deeper and ask some tough questions of, there's an email address at the bottom of your screen. I would encourage you to email us and let us know what questions you would like us to ask because we want to do this and we think it provides a great service to the people of Denver. So thank you very much.