Ferguson residents petition for police body camera rules

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

A group of residents in Ferguson, Mo., announced Tuesday that they are launching a petition drive to amend the city charter to mandate that the city's police officers wear police body cameras while on duty and establish other rules regulating the use of the devices.

The St. Louis suburb was where a white police officer last summer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen whose death ignited months of protests throughout the country and spurred calls for police departments to equip officers with cameras.

The cameras are attached to an officer's clothing, helmet or glasses and capture footage of arrests, traffic stops and other police encounters with the public.

The Ferguson officer, Darren Wilson, was not wearing a body camera at the time of the incident. Wilson said he fired at Brown after he was attacked by the teen, while a friend of the teen, Dorian Johnson, said that Brown was "shot like an animal." A St. Louis County grand jury last November opted not to indict Wilson, who later resigned from the department.

Nick Kasoff, who is organizing the drive, said that he and six other residents are hoping to gather the roughly 1,300 signatures, or roughly 10% of city residents, needed to get the issue on the ballot for the April 2016 municipal election. His group is being advised by the Liberty Initiative Fund, a group in northern Virginia that assists groups throughout the country with citizen initiatives.

"Whichever side of the debate you are on, you have video footage of what happened and things can be done properly," Kasoff said in a telephone interview.

About 50 cameras were donated to the police department soon after the incident last year. But there are no statutes governing how the cameras are to be used, how the city should go about maintaining the videos or disseminate footage to the public, Kasoff said.

The city of Ferguson said in a written statement that it currently requires officers to wear body cameras and that it has budgeted camera and video storage upgrades in 2015-16 fiscal year. The city, however, declined to explain further what policies they currently have in place governing the use of the cameras.

The charter amendment that Kasoff's group submitted on Tuesday would require Ferguson police officers to wear a body camera while on duty and direct the department to make the recorded data accessible to people appearing in the video. In addition, police would have to report all use of force incidents to the city council and erase video records after two years unless otherwise required by law.

"Everybody knows this problem isn't limited to Ferguson," Paul Jacob, president of Liberty Initiative Fund, said a statement. "But Ferguson marks a symbolic starting point for people across the country, who are tackling criminal justice reform directly through the citizen initiative – from body cameras for police to ending civil asset forfeiture and other policing for profit schemes."

The police body camera push comes as another group of Ferguson residents is pushing for the recall of Mayor James Knowles.

Members of the group, known as Ground Level Support, said they turned in an amended petition to the city clerk on Friday that includes more than 2,000 signatures from residents who support recalling Knowles.

The St. Louis County Clerk is now reviewing the submitted petition to determine whether the group collected enough valid signatures to put the issue on the ballot, perhaps as early as the city's August election.