Video: Columbus Police Change Body Camera Policy

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Columbus, Miss. (WCBI) — The Columbus police department made the decision Tuesday to change it’s policy when it comes to body cameras.

Shift supervisors will now be responsible for auditing their officer’s body camera use after each shift.

A weekly audit will also be conducted by another staff member to verify the accuracy.

“As we started working with the committee…”, explained Interim Chief Fred Shelton, “…we saw things that need to be taken care of and we started working on them…”

The special committee that was formed to review the department’s Special Operations Group, or SOG, that was involved in the shooting of Ricky Ball in October held their final meeting Tuesday.

The meeting was meant to be a final review for committee members to come together and discuss the body cameras, as well as decide what consequences would be appropriate if an officer does not abide by the policies.

The proposed consequences will be, if an officer does not activate their body camera before their patrol vehicle’s blue lights are turned on:

For the first offense, the officer faces 10 day suspension with no pay.

The second offense would be 30 day suspension with no pay, as well as possible termination due to severity of incident.

Third offense would be automatic termination of employment.

“We wanted to make sure that…we weren’t jeopardizing somebody’s livelihood but we also wanted to make sure that the consequences were steep enough that when they’re broken…the importance of it so it doesn’t keep reoccurring…”, said citizen committee member and President of the Federation of Democratic Women in Columbus and Lowndes County Tiffany Sturdivant.

Sturdivant also hopes the recent discussions will help build a relationship between the community and the police department.

Shelton also explained that no one in the department as well as the company that is in charge of the data collect from the cameras, Taser, can manually delete the video that is collected.

In the event video is to be deleted, Taser will notify the department of a possible deletion.

The video that is collected by the cameras is separated into categories, based on what is recorded. That video is then programmed for deletion, for example, 1 year after recorded, 5 years, until manually deleted, etc.

The amount of time before deletion is dependent on what the video has recorded. For example, a routine traffic stop will have a 1 year retention, but homicide/lethal force video is placed under “under manually deleted”, which Shelton says is never deleted.

This committee will also become a civilian oversight committee, which Sturdivant says will be a “checks and balance” from the community to have over the police department.

Sturdivant said the oversight committee would be the “liaison” from the community to police, discussing police complaints and audit officer training.

The committee also made recommendations pertaining to the consequences of an unauthorized ride along in a patrol car.

Those consequences would be:

First offense, 5 day suspension without pay.
Second offense, 10 day suspension without pay.
Third offense, termination of employment.

The committee will present these recommendations to the Mayor and City Council next Tuesday.

Categories: Local News

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