It's About Time

The pending introduction of body-worn cameras by police officers in four of the larger East End departments — with the notable exceptions of East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village — is a good, first effort, at holding departments and officers more accountable to the public, and at the same time also ensuring that officers are protected from false claims that might arise.

While the technology has been around for about a decade to equip officers with body cams, they never came into use by local departments (except for Westhampton Beach Police, which has been working on getting a program up and running for a few years) until fresh cries as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and a desire for racial equality led to an urgency over the last couple years for nationwide police reform.

Having cops wear cameras is one way to help level a playing field that has been uneven for decades upon decades.

While the use of body cameras seems like a “no-brainer” to Lisa Votino, a local activist who sat on both the Southampton Town and Southampton Village police review committees while reforms were being formulated, it took that state framework — departments were compelled to form review committees and update policies under orders from former Governor Andrew Cuomo — to begin to make that a reality on the South Fork.

The need for cameras resonated not only with the activists, she said, but also with members of law enforcement on the committees, noting that everyone seemed to be on the same page.

Westhampton Beach is the only police department currently using body cameras. The Sag Harbor, Southampton Town and Southampton Village departments are all getting ready to launch programs of their own.

Westhampton Beach Police Chief Steven McManus said the cameras can only be a positive aspect of policing in his department and in general.

“I think they help everyone,” he said. “It helps the officers, and it helps the people they’re interacting with.”

While he noted that the department has been working to implement a program for several years, with some starts and stops, he said the recent social justice movement demonstrated that it was the correct move. “We work for the public and we have to adapt to what society is asking us to do,” he said.

The use of body cameras is not solely about accountability — or proving that whether an officer acted correctly or not during an encounter with the public, or conversely proving that the civilian acted appropriately — it becomes a matter of building trust between the officers and the community, trust that can be earned by both sides. As Votino points out, it creates checks and balances.

The cameras will not work in a vacuum, however, when it comes to reform efforts. The departments must continue conversations with local community members and strive to locate and rewrite inequities in their policies, particularly when it comes to use of force.

Because of the quality of law enforcement we enjoy here on the South Fork, we have not seen the same kind of horrific deaths occurring in police custody like the murder of George Floyd that led to the social justice movement — and complaints of use of force violations seem to be nonexistent. The use of body cameras may be one tool to help keep it that way.

Nationwide, the proliferation of the use of cameras — not necessarily police cameras, but everyday phone cameras — has shone in brutal detail crimes against the public by some police officers. The use of police body cameras will only heighten that effect, ensuring that everyone’s actions are preserved for later review.

There have been technological issues that have kept some departments from instituting camera systems: how do you store the videos, how do you provide the videos to the courts and defense attorneys, how do you pay for the staff to keep and organize the videos? But those questions appear to have been answered to some degree, allowing the four South Fork departments to move forward.

But that makes it all the more frustrating that the East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village departments are lagging behind their colleagues and seem to have no plan to implement body camera systems anytime in the near future.

East Hampton Village Police Chief Michael Tracey cites labor union issues in preventing him from moving forward with a camera system, while Town Police Chief Michael D. Sarlo said the initial start-up costs are prohibitive. Both must work harder to overcome these obstacles as their counterparts have done in their neighboring departments. All local departments should be on the same playing field, for the good of the cops on the street and the residents they interact with.

Police body cameras should be seen as an invaluable tool to promote a partnership between officers and their constituents and create an undeniably level playing field for everyone in the community.

And no police department should be hesitating about their usefulness or benefit. Sag Harbor Police Chief Austin J. McGuire noted that “99.9 percent of the time, these cameras are going to be in our favor, meaning that it’ll justify whatever we do — that’s just my experience.”

How can you argue with that?