After failing two weeks ago—by one vote—to pass an ordinance requiring Baton Rouge police officers to be outfitted with body cameras, the Metro Council will resume discussion on the issue at its meeting Wednesday.
But this time around, it’s Councilman Buddy Amoroso who is bringing forth a new resolution. Since last fall, Councilwoman C. Denise Marcelle has led the effort. On May 27, the council most recently deferred the matter, after coming up one vote shy of the seven necessary to pass Marcelle’s ordinance requiring the department to outfit officers with the cameras by the start of next year.
Amoroso says his resolution—which would direct the department to conduct a trial and study period of the technology, and establish a committee to evaluate and study the cost of full implementation—is designed to quell the department’s concerns over the cost and timeline for adopting the technology.
“Basically, we would have been giving the department an unfunded mandate,” says Amoroso of the ordinance the council rejected two weeks ago, which he voted in favor of.
At the council’s previous meeting, Police Chief Carl Dabadie said the department is on board with getting the cameras. However, he expressed concerns about paying for the technology, saying if his department is mandated to use the cameras, then the council should give it a mandate on how to pay for them.
The police department is already committed to begin using 100 body cameras. They’ve already been ordered, a department spokesman has told Daily Report, and should be in use soon.
Amoroso’s resolution calls for the 100 cameras to be used on a trial basis, while a five-member committee—chaired by Marcelle, and including Dabadie, District Attorney Hillar Moore III, a police union representative and someone from the city-parish finance department—further studies the issue. The committee would report back to the Metro Council every two months.
In an email to her Amoroso and other council members, Marcelle says: “I do not want a resolution, instead I want an ordinance that mandates that the body cameras be worn as a part of their uniform just as guns are considered a part of the uniform.”
Marcelle says making the cameras a part of the police uniform would ensure they will be used beyond the tenure of current police chief, should the next chief not be in favor of them.
“As I explained to you when you suggested [this] resolution, this chief says that he supports the cameras, but the next chief may not see this as a priority, so that’s why it’s important that we mandate it,” Marcelle says in the email, adding: “I would appreciate a favorable vote on the item as presented and I’m willing to meet with anyone who wants to discuss the funding options.”
The police department has estimated that outfitting its roughly 660 officers with body cameras, and purchasing the necessary servers to store and analyze the data they collect, could cost anywhere between $1 million and $2 million,. The department has applied for a federal grant of $700,000 for body cameras, but it is still awaiting a decision.
Amoroso praises Marcelle for leading the discussion on body cameras so far, saying she has done a “phenomenal job.” He says his resolution is being offered up as a compromise on concerns raised by the department thus far.
“There are very few proposals that the police chief, the police union and the council all agree upon, and everyone is in favor of the cameras,” says Amoroso. “Everybody likes it, but like everything else, the devil is in the details … Yes, this is a compromise. To me, I think it’s something more reasonable than an unfunded mandate.”
The council convenes at 4 p.m. on the third floor of City Hall, 222 St. Louis St. See the full agenda.
—Steve Sanoski
