ACC reports dismissals tied to body-camera evidence; members press for consistent retention and viewability
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
The county's Accountability and Compliance Committee reviewed recent case outcomes and urged law-enforcement agencies to improve body-worn and in-car video retention and file formats to ensure the ACC can review evidence within complaint windows.
Tom, speaking for the ACC, summarized seven cases the committee reviewed since June and highlighted how body-worn and in-car video frequently determined outcomes. "In June... the body cam didn't support that, so we didn't we didn't find against the officer," Tom said while describing multiple reviews that resulted in no finding of misconduct when video showed officers' actions. Tom and other members also described cases where video was not available or was in a format the ACC could not view, making adjudication harder.
PAB member Ian told the meeting that, across roughly a year, the ACC had seen about 47 cases and that 44 were dismissed, often because body-camera footage supported the officers' accounts; three resulted in low-level corrective actions. "Having the body cam footage is making sure that these things don't ... that the truth will out," Ian said.
Law-enforcement representatives acknowledged the problem and explained trade-offs. Chief Snyder of Hampstead said retention schedules and storage costs are a real constraint: agencies must balance retention length against available budget and storage capacity. He suggested the state's attorney's digital-evidence unit as a technical resource for processing and viewing footage.
Board members and law enforcement discussed possible county-level guidance or policy to ensure video is retained long enough to meet complaint windows and produced in a viewable format. The PAB said it may ask the county attorney or commissioners to consider a retention-consistency policy, but no formal county policy was proposed or adopted during the meeting.
The ACC also noted operational problems unrelated to evidence: occasional erasures or nonstandard file formats, and that some footage tied to older cases was no longer available. Several speakers urged departments to coordinate with IT and the state's attorney's office to reduce these problems so the ACC can reliably review evidence within statutory deadlines. No motions or votes were taken; the discussion closed with staff and departments agreeing to follow up on technical options and retention schedules.