For two years now, police officers in the city of Ville Platte have been wearing body cameras. “I use to have lawsuits across my desk every month. Once a month it was a lawsuit because of he-said, she-said," says Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine. But since the city implemented body cameras, Vidrine says those lawsuits have gone down by ninety percent.
The state’s Law Enforcement Body Camera Implementation Task Force met for the first time Wednesday to see what it would take to get all police officers in Louisiana outfitted.
Lake Charles is getting ready to purchase body cameras. But in order to make that happen across the state, says Mayor Randy Roach, "there should be some legislation in place to give all agencies some guidance and assistance so that there are no unanswered questions and realistic, uniform expectations when it comes to the use of body cameras in the state of Louisiana.”
Darrell Basco, President of the Louisiana Fraternal Order of Police, warned that a one-size fits all approach likely won’t work. "This is going to be something that will affect somebody from the smaller sized--Ville Platte-- to the city of New Orleans, all across the state," he says.
Colonel David Staton with the Louisiana State Police was hesitant about the idea of placing a mandate on police departments to adopt body cameras.
But leaving room for discretion is what concerns some communities. “It is about the integrity of our justice system. And in my community it is a real issue, it’s not a theoretical thing," says NAACP attorney, Alfreeda Tillman Bester.
The Task Force will present recommendations to the Legislature prior to March’s regular session. But Mayor Roach, a former state lawmaker, pointed to Article Six, Section Fourteen of the Louisiana constitution, which states that if the Legislature can’t find money to fund the cameras, then they "cannot necessarily mandate anything.”