NYPD's New Body Camera Policy Does The Opposite Of What It's Supposed To, Advocates Say

When Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the citywide rollout of body cameras for NYPD patrol officers last year, he praised the initiative as ushering in "a new day in policing, bolstering transparency and increasing accountability." According to attorneys and advocates, the NYPD has just codified a policy ensuring the cameras will have the opposite effect.

As Gotham Gazette first reported, the NYPD quietly published its long-awaited guidelines on sharing police body camera footage with the public earlier this month. The two-page memo gives the department 30 days to "decide" if footage should be released, "excluding any non-disclosure period(s), provided that the force investigation review is completed."

In the event that the NYPD does decide to release body camera videos, the new guidelines mandate they include "representative samples" of the incident showing "any salient events leading up to the event." The policy allows that footage will be redacted "as appropriate, before release to the public."

The order was issued by Police Commissioner James O'Neill without any notification to the press or public.

Michael Sisitzky, lead policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the guidelines "show the department still doesn't fundamentally understand the reason for equipping officers with body cameras in the first place."

"What this policy does is raise concerns that the NYPD is using body cameras as just another tool to benefit law enforcement, and frame the narrative around critical incidents, rather than producing a full public accounting of its officers' actions," Sisitzky told Gothamist.

The city first deployed body cameras in 2014 on a federal judge's order, and announced that it had equipped all 20,000 patrol officers with the devices this past March. From the beginning, advocates say, the footage was tightly guarded by the NYPD, often selectively edited and shared inconsistently with the public.

The controversial approach dates back to the city's first deadly police encounter captured on body camera. Back in 2017, officers shot and killed Miguel Richards, a 31-year-old college student, inside his own home. The department initially released a compilation of edited body camera footage, which showed Richards holding a knife and fake gun.

The New York Lawyers for the Public Interest successfully sued for the full 18-minute recording. That footage showed cops frantically searching Richards' home for a weapon as they neglected to render aid for three minutes following the shooting, despite believing the man was still alive. “Everything went wrong,” said Ruth Lowenkron, Director of the Disability Justice Program at NYLPI.

Warning: This video contains strong language and disturbing violence.

Advocates said the incident showed cops' failure to respond to a person having a mental health crisis; the NYPD, meanwhile, said cops acted in line with their training. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by Richards's family is pending.

Since Richards's death, the department has only grown more reluctant about releasing recordings of deadly encounters. As of this past June, the NYPD had a backlog of nearly 800 footage requests. According to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city's police oversight body, the number of investigations awaiting body camera footage requests has spiked from 2 percent to 36 percent in the past year.

Reporters have also found themselves blocked from accessing footage that would appear to meet the standards for public disclosure, as laid out in an an appellate court ruling in February. In recent months, the department has rejected or ignored over half a dozen Freedom of Information Requests for police body camera footage filed by Gothamist/WNYC.

Some of those requests have been for non-deadly incidents, including an encounter this summer in which an NYPD officer ran over a Citi Bike while "forcefully stopping" a cyclist. The department's new policy refers only to "critical incidents," defined by the department as encounters that end in death or serious physical injury.

Police have rejected our request for the footage in the friendly-fire death of Officer Brian Mulkeen, who was killed alongside Antonio Williams on September 29th. Law enforcement leaders have, however, described the footage's contents.

While the NYPD is not alone in its failure to disclose body camera footage, experts say there are some police departments that have followed through on their commitments to transparency. According to an analysis by Upturn, a nonprofit consulting firm, 27 percent of body camera footage that captured a fatal police shooting in 2017 was released within seven days. The firm points out that the Las Vegas Police Department "consistently shared the relevant footage within three days" of all five fatal police shootings that year.

In Sisitzky's view, the NYPD should not have the power to determine whether recordings are shared or withheld from public view. "This is the latest in a long string of decisions and policies that shows the NYPD views itself as accountable only to itself and not the public or elected officials, including the mayor," he said.

The NYPD did not respond to specific inquiries about the new policy, but provided Gothamist with the following statement: "Body-warn cameras enhance the safety and accountability of the dedicated men and women of the NYPD while improving their ability to ensure public safety."

Asked whether the NYPD saw any role for the cameras in ensuring public accountability of officers, as Mayor de Blasio initially described, the spokesperson did not respond.