Two years after voters approved a body-camera program for the Anchorage Police Department (APD), the program has not been implemented. With further delays expected, the Anchorage Assembly signaled interest in writing police worn body camera policy into municipal code during Tuesday’s regular assembly meeting, trying to force implementation of the policy.
Several Assembly members, including Kevin Cross, Felix Rivera, and Daniel Volland, expressed frustration with the delays at the meeting.
“I think at this point, it is unacceptable,” Volland said. “It is inexcusable.”
Police-worn body cameras were approved by voters in April 2021, and nearly $2 million of tax-payer funds have been collected to purchase and implement them. The municipality began the process of purchasing cameras in March, but they still have not come to an agreement on how to implement them. In March, APD discussed ongoing negotiations with the police union and estimated that officers would be outfitted with the cameras by the beginning of 2024, at the latest.
APD’s delays to implement body-worn cameras place it behind other law enforcement agencies in Alaska. The Alaska State Troopers, as well as the cities of Juneau and Fairbanks, have implemented body-worn cameras.
At a Public Safety Committee meeting last Wednesday, Deputy Chief Sean Case informed the Assembly that negotiations over body-worn camera policy had hit some snags and the conversation would be delayed until this fall.
“There was an additional issue that came up in negotiations and both parties agreed that additional complication with the policy that came up required more preparation time and potentially an even longer arbitration period,” Case said.
Case declined to say what specific issues caused the most recent delay. Camera policy has been under negotiations since last fall because the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association (APDEA) and APD could not agree on when the footage can be viewed by officers involved in shooting incidents, or how it could be used.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Cross said that it was disheartening that negotiations have been delayed until the fall and announced that the Assembly was going to take a more proactive role to move cameras forward. He suggested that they may need to have an executive session with APDEA to discuss matters that the union felt were confidential and that were holding up the camera policy.
“I look forward to working with the Assembly to resolve this issue and see if we can’t move this matter forward,” Cross said.
Rivera and Volland went a step further and said that they had been in contact with the Assembly’s legal council to find out how they could step in and put camera policy into code, rather than continue to wait.
“I have let our assembly counsel know that I’m interested in pursuing doing whatever the Assembly can, to codify our own policy at this point and then also just to look at what other levers we can apply.” Volland said.
He also put Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration on notice that he wanted to see all requests for arbitration in order to “make sure that those talks, those negotiations, are actually happening.”
Rivera added that he wanted to codify “a requirement for automatic release of footage under specific circumstances, to that policy, because the public deserves that kind of transparency from our police department.”
