Police in Dane County could be issued body cameras as soon as 2016.
Ald. Scott Resnick, District 8, and Leland Pan, District 5 Supervisor for the Dane County Board of Supervisors, discussed a new study about police cameras at a press conference at the Student Activity Center Monday.
Pan and Resnick announced the study will attempt to discover the effectiveness of body cameras placed on law enforcement officials. Instead of relying solely on dashboard cameras, members of law enforcement would have cameras attached to their person while on patrol as an accountability measure.
“It’s a policy that's gaining traction, and a lot of things have happened recently that have put the policy on the forefront of ideas in the Madison and Dane County community, most recently with the shooting in Ferguson,” Pan said.
Pan hoped the cameras would ease the mistrust between law enforcement and minorities in the Madison community.
“There’s a huge issue with underrepresented communities with having a history of distrust of law enforcement,” Pan said. “I want to see this policy as a way of starting to build that trust of letting our underrepresented communities, whether that be students or minorities, know that there is an oversight measure.”
The study would cost $20,000, and already has the support of Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, according to Resnick.
“I asked him, ‘Do you support body cameras?’ and he said, ‘I would put them on every single officer if I had the budget,’” according to Resnick.
In response to a question about the impact of the new cameras on privacy and public access to the footage, Pan said the project is still in a study phase to investigate how to ensure the oversight measure is transparent while still protecting the privacy of community members.
Pan and Resnick hoped the law enforcement body camera measure would take effect as a Dane County policy in 2016.
