WUNRN
Via Women’s Justice Center – Santa Rosa, California - http://justicewomen.com/policebodycameras.pdf
Via Nancy Palandati, Co-Chair of Sonoma County ACLU and
ACLU Members, to the
Sonoma County Law Enforcement Sub-Committee Task Force, and to the Public.
USE OF POLICE BODY CAMERAS IN LAW
ENFORCEMENT VICTIM CONTACTS
IN CASES OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN & CHILDREN
RECOMMENDATION: There Should Be Video,
or at the Very Least, Audio Recordings
Made in ALL Law Enforcement Victim
Contacts in Cases of Violence Against Women
and Children, Including in Contacts
with Non-Uniformed as Well as with Uniformed
Officers, and Including During All
Phone Contacts.
Denying the accountability protection
of law enforcement recordings to women and
children in gender based crimes, while
providing that protection to the rest of the
community, is a wholesale violation of
women’s constitutional rights to equal protection
of the laws.
We strongly disagree with Sheriff Steve
Freitas’ position, or that of any police department, of
selectively not recording law enforcement
contacts with victims of violence against women and
children.
The Sheriff’s argument that he is concerned
for victim privacy is spurious and self-serving as
law enforcement throughout Sonoma County has,
for years, been regularly and routinely
making a large array of video, audio, and
photographic recordings of many of the most
sensitive of victim contacts and statements,
at the most sensitive of times, whenever it serves
law enforcement interests.
For example, law enforcement throughout Sonoma
County makes audio recordings of all
victim 911 calls. They routinely make audio
recordings of the in-depth rape victim interviews
from start to finish. Audio recordings are
always made of victim pretext calls. Fully identifiable
still photographs are taken of victims’ injuries
in all states of victim dress and undress. Most
telling of all, fully identifiable face and
body video recordings are routinely made of child sexual
assault victim in-depth interviews on a nearly
daily basis.
Throughout our 23 years of working with
victims of these crimes in Sonoma County we have
not had victims complain about law enforcement
making any of these recordings, nor have we
seen careless law enforcement release of these
recordings. Strict protocols and identity hiding
measures are already routinely used for each
media type for preventing unwarranted releases,
for preventing identifying of victims, and for
protecting victim privacy.
Law enforcement should not be allowed to hide
behind claims of concern for victim privacy in
order to deny recording of victim contacts
whenever law enforcement chooses, as it is
precisely the unrecorded contacts with victims
that are most rife with a damaging array of law
enforcement misconduct in these cases. The
nature of these misconducts aim primarily at
dissuading victims, suppressing evidence,
denying justice, and ‘ditching’ these cases, as is
described and documented in more detail
further on.
This widespread and deeply hidden law
enforcement misconduct in cases of violence against
women and children, that occurs primarily when
law enforcement is alone with victims,
continues to occur throughout our county. It
causes immense added risks to individual victims
and to the public in general, and is the root
cause of Sonoma County’s dangerously low
prosecution rates in these cases. Recording
all contacts with victims is one of
many urgently needed remedies.
California has passed a number of laws with
the precise intent of attempting to stem the tide
of these law enforcement misconducts in cases
of violence against women and children, but
because of frequent law enforcement
non-compliance with these laws, along with the high
level of invisibility of law
enforcement/victim contacts in these cases, the laws haven’t had the
needed effect.
Most importantly, given the plethora of law
enforcement recordings already being made of
victims’ most sensitive moments, in all media
forms, whenever it suits law enforcement, for law
enforcement now to selectively, unnecessarily,
and wholesale deny full recording coverage
to victims of violence against women, while
providing this level of protection and accountability
to all other citizen contacts, constitutes a
massive discriminatory denial of women’s
constitutional rights to equal protection of
the law.
Historical factors also inform and heighten
the imperative to record all law enforcement/victim
contacts. For well over a century, up into
recent decades, the excuse of the privacy of family
matters was a primary excuse, if not the
primary excuse, for law enforcement’s blanket
refusals to deal with violence against women
and children. And further, law enforcement’s
historical discriminatory hostility to women
and to these cases is also well documented and
continues on to this day.
The Sheriff’s Department, and other police
agencies in our county, cannot be allowed to
perpetuate these extremely dangerous and
discriminatory policies toward women and children
into the 21st century.
There is Compelling Need to Record ALL
Law Enforcement Contacts With Victims of
Violence Against Women and Children as
Recording is the Most Immediate Effective
Means of Reducing the Rampant Law
Enforcement Misconducts and Violations That Are
Especially Rife in these Contacts.
* The serious violent offenses most poorly
handled by law enforcement are the crimes of
violence against women and children, as the
disastrous local and national statistics all attest.
* The dangerously low prosecution rates for
these crimes stem most frequently from law
enforcement misconducts at victim-law
enforcement contacts, particularly during contacts
where the law enforcement officer is alone
with the victim.
The Principle Law Enforcement
Misconducts That Occur During Law Enforcement
Contact with Victims Are:
A general law enforcement obstruction of
justice and denial of equal protection by
* dismissing, disregarding, degrading,
discouraging, and dissuading victims,
* misinforming and outright lying to victims
about their rights, the viability of their cases,
about what can and can’t be done, about
evidence, points of law, available police
procedures, and more,
* failures to ask key and required questions
about threats, weapons, injuries, witnesses,
abuse history, evidence, etc.
* failure to write down critical elements of
victim statements and evidence leads,
* failures to impart required information on
victims’ rights, denial of victims’ rights to be
accompanied by an advocate and support person
of her choice in law enforcement
interviews, denial of other victim rights,
* failures to provide adequate language
interpreting,
* failures to follow up with questions on
evidence leads in victim statements, failures to
properly and fully take witness statements and
child witness statements, failure to
properly interview witnesses,
* withholding critical law enforcement powers,
failures to provide required victim
protections, failure to write reports, and
more.
* Once these kinds of violations occur at
victim contact it is often the end of the case as victims
retreat in despair, or it is the beginning of
a failed investigation as evidence leads in the victim
statement have been overwhelmingly suppressed
and/or left unrecorded in writing.
It must be understood that these outcomes are
often the intent of these officers’ violations, as
too many officers are still hostile to and
biased against these cases. They want these victims
and their cases to go away as quickly as possible
so they can get back to what too many
officers narrowly view as ‘real police work’.
As you can imagine, when such officers are alone
with victims it’s far too easy for the officer
to disparage the victim and her case, withhold
proper written record of what happened, steer
the victim wrong, and be done with it.
Law enforcement agencies are almost always
complicit in these misconducts and tend to circle
the wagons around the most egregious officer
offenders.
Unlike victims of police brutality who know what
hit them, the victims of the above kinds of
police misconduct are often left profoundly
confused, despairing, and not knowing where to
turn, as they’ve been led to believe that
nothing more can be done, or there’s not enough
evidence, or that there wasn’t a crime
committed. When, and if, victims do complain, there are
rarely any witnesses to support them.
Clearly video, or even audio recordings, would
capture the majority of these misconducts. It’s
critical that ALL victim contacts with law
enforcement be covered in this way, as these kinds
of misconduct are perpetrated by non-uniformed
officers as well as uniformed officers.
California Has Passed Many Laws
Attempting to Stem the Rampant and Dangerous Law
Enforcement Misconduct that Occurs in
Victim-law Enforcement Contacts in Cases of
Violence Against Women and Children.
These Laws Have Been Only Minimally
Successful Due to the Fact That These
Contacts Remain Mostly out of Public and
Witness View and that Law Enforcement
Continues to Violate the Laws.
Here are just four of many more California
laws that have attempted to get control of the
rampant law enforcement misconduct in cases of
violence against women and children:
1. California Penal Code Sections
679.04 and 679.05 carve out unique rights for victims
of domestic violence and sexual assault to be
accompanied by an advocate and a
support person of the victim’s choice in all
law enforcement interviews.
These two laws also obligate law enforcement
to inform victims of these rights,
something law enforcement in Sonoma County
almost never does.
These two laws make an exception for the
initial contact with law enforcement for the
obvious reason that the initial contact is
usually under urgent circumstances, and, as
such, there is not sufficient time for either
victims or law enforcement to bring advocates
and support persons into the picture.
This fact only heightens the imperative for
law enforcement recording ALL contacts with
victims, especially the initial contact.
2. California Family Code Section 6228
obligates
law enforcement to give domestic
violence victims a full copy of their police
report within five days of the victim making the
request. This law recognizes the widespread
law enforcement practice in domestic
violence cases of leaving out key elements of
victim statements and key evidence in
the written report. By obligating law
enforcement to give domestic violence victims an
opportunity to review the reports at any time,
it was hoped victim review of the reports
would serve as a check on this kind of
misconduct.
The law has helped to some extent. However,
too many victims do not know of this
right, and many others have difficulty
evaluating the report. Additionally, as is the
situation in a case we are working right now
where law enforcement abuse has been
extreme, Santa Rosa Police are simply just
refusing the victim’s repeated requests for
a copy of the report.
3. California Penal Code Section 836(c)(1)
requires
law enforcement to make an arrest
on all domestic violence restraining order
violations. This law was passed in recognition
of the all too frequent practice of law
enforcement officers to deny women police action
in these cases and, instead, tell women to go
back to family court. The law was passed,
in fact, in the wake of the high number of
women who were ending up murdered after
police walked away without taking actions when
the women reported domestic violence
restraining order violations.
4. California Penal Code Section 13730
mandates
that police write a written incident
report on all domestic violence related calls.
This law was passed in recognition of the
many times victims have reported domestic
violence and police have walked away and
written NOTHING. We have a domestic violence
kidnap case right now in which SRPD
officers walked away and wrote nothing despite
the law and despite multiple neighbor
witnesses calling 911 in distress at seeing
the struggling woman being forced into the
car.
Sonoma County Law Enforcement Violence
Against Women Statistics, as Well as
National Statistics, Show the Extent
of the Disastrous Dangers and Injustices That
Result from the Misconduct in Law
Enforcement Contacts with Victims in These Cases.
Here we provide only the local statistics most
relevant to the question of police body cameras.
The statistics are for the year 2011, the most
recent year for which we have statistics. They
represent a compilation of the violence
against women statistics from each of Sonoma
County’s ten law enforcement policing
agencies, including the Sheriff’s department.
These statistics show that, in Sonoma County,
the overwhelming majority of crimes of violence
against women and children are buried alive in
the darkness of our police and Sheriff’s
departments without ever even being sent to
the District Attorney’s Office for review, thus
ending any possibility of the women’s access
to justice and the protections justice affords.
In 2011, in Sonoma County,
* 75% of all rape reports taken by police and
Sheriff were never even sent to the
DA’s Office for review,
* 75% of all child sex abuse reports taken by
police or Sheriff were never even
sent to the DA’s Office for review
* Over 70% of all domestic violence related
calls for service to police and Sheriff
never resulted in reports being sent to the
DA’s office for review.
Keep in mind that in regard to the rape and
child sex abuse cases, these statistics represent
only the cases where police reports have been
written. Cases where police fail to write a report
are completely lost in the void.
These statistics also show that despite all
the law enforcement polished public rhetoric about
how much they care about the victims, behind
the scenes, our local police handling of these
cases hasn’t improved much at all over the
many years we’ve been gathering these statistics.
(For more extensive statistics.
Further Considerations for Law
Enforcement Recording in All Cases of Violence Against
Women and Children:
EVIDENCE ENHANCEMENT: Even under the
best law enforcement circumstances,
recordings would hugely enhance the
evidentiary value of police contact with victims
of violence against women and
children.
Much of the evidence, and most all evidence
leads, in these cases are contained in the victim
statements, this due in part to
the fact that the victim and suspect almost always have an
ongoing, either intimate or close, social
relationship. Due to the highly emotional nature of
victim statements in these cases, even the
most diligent officers commonly fail to catch all the
details in the victims’ telling of their
stories. Recording would be invaluable in regularly and
reliably filling in the gaps.
California Laws Recognize the Need for
Enhanced Privacy Protections for Victims for
Victims of Violence Against Women and
Children in the Law Enforcement Process.
However, These Laws Pertain
Principally to Keeping a Victim’s Name from Being Made
Public, Something That Law Enforcement
Has Had No Trouble Doing Despite All the
Video, Audio, and Photos It’s Already
Making.
There is, for example, the rape victim’s right
to keep identifying information off the record
throughout much of the law enforcement
process, and the right of people to report child abuse
anonymously, and more. However, to our
knowledge, California law has never sought to
restrict any kind of recording law enforcement
can or can’t make in properly responding to
victims of violence against women and children
cases..
As stated earlier, in 23 years of working with
victims of violence against women and children
in Sonoma County, we are not aware of law
enforcement breaching victim privacy protections
though they routinely make an array of audio,
video, and photographic recordings of victims.
If anything, a problem for victims has been
that law enforcement has held these records too
tightly, even when victims have the right to
see them. Nor can we remember any victims, or
child victim’s parents, expressing any concern
when law enforcement has wanted to make
audio or video recordings.
Victims’ privacy concerns seem to revolve
mostly around wanting to keep their names and
identity from going public. And in this regard
law enforcement has been diligent. It is plausible
that more extensive law enforcement recordings
could discourage an occasional victim from
coming forward, just as this expanded
recording could plausibly discourage an occasional
victim or witness in other crime categories.
However, as we’ve argued throughout, the urgency
of stemming the dangers and damage of existing
widespread law enforcement misconducts
in these cases far outweighs hypothetical
concerns.
Furthermore, in the case where a victim might
object to recordings, there is no reason law
enforcement couldn’t handle this situation in
the way it will be handling their recordings of other
objecting victims, witnesses, and confidential
informants.
In debating these issues, it is critical to
keep in mind that principal reasons victims of violence
against women give for not reporting to law
enforcement is victims’ fears that law enforcement
will not do anything and/or fears that law
enforcement will not believe them. Recording law
enforcement/victim contacts should, in fact,
benefit greatly in helping allay those fears.
It should also be considered that victims
themselves are changing in the way they respond to
these crimes. Today, there has been a welcome
lessening of the excruciating self-blaming
victims of these crimes have suffered, and a
healthy increase in victim demands for justice and
vindication. Indeed, many young women across
the country are making their own videos
talking about their rapes and rage and posting
those videos on youtube or facebook and
getting them into the press.
Of course, victim privacy should and can be
fully protected under a policy of mandated
recording of all law enforcement/victim
contacts! But In light of all the above facts and
discussion, Sheriff Freitas’ professed concern
for victim privacy as a pretext for selectively
keeping these contacts in the dark in cases of
violence against women and children is not only
disingenuous and discriminatory, it should also be considered suspect.