Update 12/17/20:
Police in Arlington County officially began wearing body cameras on Wednesday. The cameras will record all dispatched call for service, enforcement contacts, and investigative contacts, according to a press release from the police department.
“We recognize our community’s trust is earned each day with every interaction,” said acting police chief Andy Penn in a statement (The county’s former police chief, Murray “Jay” Farr, retired in September). “I am confident these cameras will build upon our longstanding history of community policing by highlighting the professionalism of the agency while instilling greater public confidence as we continue to hold ourselves accountable to the highest professional standards.”
The county began a small body camera pilot in 2016, but did not fund a full program until this summer. The decision to fund the program came after pressure from the Arlington County branch of the NAACP and a newly-formed advocacy group called Arlington for Justice, who both pushed the county to fund the body camera rollout after the killing of George Floyd and the large, nationwide uprisings that followed.
Original:
Arlington County is moving to provide body cameras for its law enforcement officers, following renewed calls for police accountability after the killing of George Floyd.
The county launched a pilot program in 2016 where 25 officers used the cameras. Since that time, the police department has “consistently asked” for body cameras, but the county has decided not to fund the program, in part for budget reasons.
On Wednesday, County Manager Mark Schwartz said “the time has come for body-worn cameras in Arlington.” The community “expects and deserves” a culture of transparency and fairness, he said.
Schwartz will allocate $1.05 million for the program as part of his one-year Capital Improvement Plan. With approval from the county board, police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and fire marshals should receive body cameras in January.
Beyond the up-front costs, Arlington’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year must be updated to include funds for ongoing data storage and maintenance, plus new employees needed to run the program.
These costs will amount to more than a million dollars a year, according to the county.
There have been rising public calls for Arlington to implement body-worn cameras over the last three weeks — after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck and killed him, inspiring protests worldwide.
Arlington has also been scrutinized for the role its officers played in the aggressive clearing of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square for the president’s photo-op at St. John’s Church on June 1. Arlington officials pulled their officers from the scene immediately and said the U.S. Park Police had abused its mutual aid agreement with the county.
The Arlington branch of the NAACP urged the county to fund body cameras and started a Change.org petition that now has more than 8,000 signatures. A new advocacy group, Arlington for Justice, formed in the wake of Floyd’s death and issued a list of demands to the county board. That list includes implementing a body camera program (and developing penalties for any officers who turn them off).
Yolande Kwinana, a founder of the group, says adding cameras is a good first step, but they don’t solve problems with policing.
“It is a step because body cameras help to tell the story,” she told DCist/WAMU on Monday, “I think of body cameras as vehicles of truth … so we know what happened and there’s a recording of what happened.”
But seeing what happened is only one piece of the puzzle. “One of our other core issues would be oversight. Who gets to decide what is right and what is not? And that should be the community, we feel,” Kwinana said.
Arlington for Justice and the Arlington NAACP have advocated for the creation of a civilian police review board with subpoena power.
Among other demands, Arlington for Justice urged the county to remove School Resource Officers from schools and cut 10 percent from the police department’s $74 million annual budget.
They want to see money reallocated to areas like mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and alternatives to calling the police. Kwinana says it’s wrong to “expect police officers to be everything to everyone at all times.”
The $1.05 million in funding includes approximately $268,000 for the camera hardware and $536,000 for data storage and maintenance.
On top of the body-worn cameras, Schwartz wants to use an additional $750,000 to replace existing in-car cameras for police cruisers.
It all comes as part of his proposed $277.5 million one-year Capital Improvement Plan.
County Board member Katie Cristol wrote on Facebook this week that Arlington had held off on purchasing body cameras in the past due to both the expense and an understanding that “body cameras alone do not lead to improved policing.” She said the county had prioritized funding for things like community policing programs.
“Yet while we believe that ACPD has worked hard to strengthen relationships with communities harmed by disparate law enforcement practices, we also know that more can and must be done,” Cristol wrote, “[W]e have clearly heard that a body-worn camera program is a step that is important to residents and leaders.”
Several nearby jurisdictions already have police body cameras, including D.C., Montgomery County, and Fairfax County.
Fairfax had delayed funding for the second phase of its body camera rollout, as part of a budget rollback amid the COVID-19 economic downturn, but county leaders now plan to fund the rollout of hundreds more cameras in the coming fiscal year.
This comes after an incident where a white Fairfax officer used his stun gun on a black man who appeared to be in distress, even though the man did not appear combative. Officials released body camera footage the next day.
The officer, Tyler Timberlake, is now charged with assault and faces up to 36 months of incarceration.
“The events in the last couple of weeks both across the country and in Fairfax made the importance of expanding the police body-worn camera program apparent both for improved public safety and transparency,” board chairman Jeff McKay said in a statement last week.
Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said the existence of body camera footage in the Timberlake incident was critical to the investigation of this case.
