The Evanston Police Department recently learned that it won’t receive a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to equip its officers with body cameras, but that doesn’t mean the cameras won’t eventually become a routine component of city policing, said Commander Joe Dugan.
The city’s police department applied for a $700,000 grant from the federal government earlier this year that if received would have paid for the cameras, storage and redaction equipment and the cost to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, Dugan said. The department brought the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Center for Public Safety and Justice on board as research partner in their application to the U.S. Department of Justice, he said.
Dugan said municipalities throughout the nation were vying for the limited funding and that it was very competitive.
With or without a grant to implement the program, he said it’s first necessary for the police department to engage in a conversation with Evanston’s residents and elected officials to determine how to proceed.
A new law signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner in August allows Illinois’ local police forces to wear body cameras. Passage of the law was fueled partly by a demand for more accountability from police in incidents that involved use-of-force.
“We’re definitely not against (body cameras),” Dugan said. “It’s a reality. It’s coming. But it’s a conversation that needs to be had by a lot of people outside the police department.”
That conversation, he said, should focus on a number of issues, including the implementation cost of a body camera program — estimated to be between $300,000 and $400,000 — and the ongoing costs, including equipment maintenance, storage and redaction equipment and staff time required to complete redaction for court hearings and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
“There’s a lot of man power hours involved as well as technology, and of course things break,” Dugan said. “There will be replacement costs and upgrades down the road.”
Privacy and the use of body cameras is also a concern that warrants discussion and input from Evanston citizens, he said. Residents expressed significant concerns several years ago after officials unveiled a plan to install surveillance cameras along routes students regularly walk to school.
Despite the privacy and financial challenges inherent in the implementation of a body camera program in the city’s police department, Dugan said police officials “see the value” of the cameras.
Use of the cameras provide many benefits both from a public relations point of view and an evidentiary standpoint, he said. For instance, Dugan said, with a body camera program in place, police could review footage captured at the scene of a crime.
The cameras can act as “an unbiased evidence collector,” noted Police Chief Richard Eddington in an interview last August. “The data shows that everywhere they have been deployed for a length of time there are a reduced number of use-of-force incidents by police and a reduced number of complaints against police.”
Dugan said he’s not currently aware of any other body camera-related grants the city’s police department could apply for. Nevertheless, he said, a discussion about a potential body camera program among Evanston’s residents, officials and the police department is needed before any cameras start recording.
“Even if we got that $700,000 (grant), I don’t think we’d be rolling it out this month,” Dugan said. “There would still need to be a conversation amongst the citizens.”
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
