UW-Madison Police, Soon To Implement Body Cameras, Consider Rules Of Their Use

Before arming her police officers with body cameras, University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Chief Susan Riseling is asking for public input on how and where officers should use them.

If all goes as planned, the UW-Madison Police Department will soon become the first campus police force in the state to have patrol officers wearing the body cameras. ​Riseling hopes the cameras will increase public trust at a time when video footage of police violence is flooding the airwaves and the Internet.

At a public listening session this week, Riseling asked whether officers should have their cameras turned on or off in a health care facilities. She said that’s where 25 percent of the incidents where her officers use force take place.

“This is one of the key things that we battle, we’re battling with,” said Riseling. “At first our thought was, ‘Yeah — hospital, medical, just turn it off.’ And then we ran the numbers and realized, ‘Wow, will our public be OK with that?’”

The issue was one of several privacy concerns discussed by students and faculty at the session. Riseling said the public input will play a big role in shaping the department’s policy for using the cameras that officers will start wearing in the fall.

Some of those attending the session suggested legislation might be needed to restrict access to videos shot in a hospital. Riseling said maybe the footage should be considered private in the same way medical records are.

Other policy suggestions that emerged from this week’s discussion included having officers wear a pin or button to alert people that their camera is on, or having police tell people they interact with that they are being filmed. There was also concern about how much of the video footage from a body cam should be accessible as a public record.

The department has ordered 10 cameras, at a cost of $400 each, to be worn by officers when they’re on patrol. Riseling said the cameras are back-ordered right now because so many other departments around the country are deciding to buy them.

Cost is a major issue that police and sheriff’s department’s across the state are worried about as they consider buying cameras for their officers. Madison Police Chief Mike Koval has predicted the price tag for his department would be about $1 million.

Chief Riseling said in creating a policy for UW police, she has looked carefully at policies already in place in departments around the country. She said any policy her department adopts will be based at least in part on a study prepared in 2014 by the Police Executive Research Forum.

Chief Riseling made it clear she doesn’t expect the cameras to change the way her officers interact with the public. She said the cameras will never be “a substitute for values, for training, for supervision, and for holding people accountable.” She said the camera’s real purpose would be to document interactions, so both police and the public can evaluate where force is used.