While some law enforcement agencies are rushing to outfit their patrol officers with body cameras in the wake of a number of high-profile cases of alleged police brutality across the U.S., expense and privacy concerns will keep them largely out of Gloucester and Mathews for now.

Gloucester Sheriff Darrell Warren said a vendor visited his agency to demonstrate a body camera system, which had its own computer server. “The cost was astronomical,” he said, putting it out of reach for the near future in these days of tight county budgets.  

With 28 patrol deputies, Warren said there are questions about how best and how long to store the accumulated information from the body-worn video cameras. He said it would be too much for the county’s IT system.

There is also the question of privacy, especially when officers interact with residents who are inside their own homes. “Is everything recorded subject to FOIA requests?” Warren said is one question that remains regarding to use of body cams.

The Gloucester Sheriff’s Office does outfit its patrol cars with dashboard cameras. “DUI stops, they’re great for that,” he said. “The problem is that the range on the microphones is limited so it gets harder to understand what is being said when the officer gets a distance from his vehicle.”

While a full body cam system may be out for now, Warren is not letting the idea drop. “York County is trying something with their own IT people, and we’ll be watching that. Also, two of our new patrol cars will come with their own body cameras that are synchronized with the car camera. We’re anxious to see how it works.”

In Mathews

Mathews Sheriff Mark Barrick and Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Bowen expressed similar concerns. Barrick said that he currently has dashboard cameras in the four patrol cars that spend the most time on the road, and he plans eventually to place them in all his patrol cars.

But at $3,000 per system, the cost is an issue in a small sheriff’s office such as Mathews. He said the sheriff’s vehicle and vehicles driven by Major John Williams and sheriff’s investigators don’t need cameras because those vehicles aren’t used to patrol the streets.

Barrick said he sees the equipment not only as a way to collect evidence for prosecuting people for infractions but also as protection for officers who might face false allegations.

“If an officer is doing the right thing, there’s nothing to hide,” he said, but, “the way things are going today, all kinds of accusations are being made against police, whether they’re factual or not.”

While he doesn’t know of any police officers that go to work intending to hurt anyone, Barrick said, “in any basket, there’s a bad apple,” with maybe a tenth of a percent to 1 percent of all police officers in the United States who “disgrace the badge.”

“If we can’t trust police officers, we’re in a sad time,” he said.

The separate issue of body cameras “runs very deep,” said Barrick.

“If you’re recording everything you do, somewhere along the way, there’ll be an invasion of privacy.”

If the government were to mandate body cameras from the perspective that police had to wear them because they couldn’t be trusted, Barrick said he would be resistant. If a police department has people it can’t trust, “why are they still working there?” he said.

But if the idea were to provide additional protection for officers, it might be a deterrent for criminals.

“If a citizen knows they’re being recorded,” said Barrick, “maybe they’d be less likely to assault an officer or act up in a manner they shouldn’t.”

Bowen said body cameras are a good technology and that he sees a time when they’re standard equipment in law enforcement, but that privacy and cost issues must be worked out first, such as what rights victims have regarding the images, who has a right to review them, who decides what’s important to keep, and how long information would have to be stored.

While the use of cameras is currently governed by department regulations, Bowen said that eventually standards will be developed and “it will all be good in the end.”

When Tazewell, Virginia, where Bowen used to work, started tape recording all of its interrogations, the number of motions to suppress evidence made by the defense decreased, he said, “because we could prove the officer had read the suspect his Miranda rights, et cetera.”

The vast majority of law enforcement officers are good and well-trained and careful to follow proper procedures, said Bowen, and with body cameras, problem officers will either learn and improve, or they’ll be weeded out.

The cost of a recording system doesn’t just involve the camera equipment, said Bowen. There’s also software, data storage, providing access to the defense attorney via a website or a DVD, and paying someone to retrieve and review the information and decide what to keep.

These issues will get resolved over time, said Bowen, and eventually state legislatures will pass laws governing the use of the technology. Then everyone will use it.