Report – NBC 6 South Florida

Police body cameras are proving to be a critical tool in finding out exactly if an officer crossed the line.

The Miami Civilian Investigative Panel spent months probing how the body cameras impact their work when citizens file complaints and their results say the cameras help the public and officers, too, according to a report NBC 6 exclusively obtained Thursday.

Wynwood and the area nearby is the number one place residents in Miami file complaints against the police. The area near downtown Miami with the entertainment district has the most interactions between the public and police. Now the report says when the incident is on a police body camera, three out of four times investigators with the civilian panel can get to the bottom of it. 

Samuel Scott was taken into custody by Miami police months after officers first started getting body cameras. Scott said he was arrested after he called the police when his car was stolen, but somehow he came the suspect. Eventually, all of the chargers were dropped.  

Miami Police said three of the officers didn’t follow the rules when it comes to turning the cameras on and off.  It’s just one example of the interactions between residents and Miami Police when the resident files a complaint. 

Now this study done by the Miami Civilian Investigative Panel, which looks into complaints citizens make against officers, finds the cameras play a major role in determining what happened.  

“It shows that they are working when they are used properly,” said Rodney Jacobs, the panel’s interim director.

He said that 74% of the time, if the CIP investigators have police video, they’re able to determine if an officer violated policy or followed the rules.

“It allows us to do our job not only effectively but efficiently,” Jacobs said. “So, the 74% number shows that we closed the case on its merits. So it’s either an officer that’s been exonerated, or we sustained or unfounded the information.”

Police District 5 is the one covering Wynwood and the area that not only had the most complaints, but also had the largest number of times when officers didn’t use the cameras properly. The number one violation when it comes to the operation of the camera is muting the audio, which happens more than half of the time.

While some officers initially opposed having the cameras, the study shows that when the camera is rolling, an officer is exonerated twice as frequently as when there is no video.  

“It’s been more than double the exonerations when officers had their body-worn cameras on. So, we see when the body-worn camera is on, it helps the officer tremendously,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs says the video can fill in the blanks when people fear coming forward, or witnesses disappear.

And now there’s more of this video around at the Miami Police Department. Police Chief Manuel Morales directed the video team to hold on to the body camera video for a year now. Some of it had only been held for three days. The study says that going to be a real help when it comes to working with them and the public when there are questions about what actions an officer took.