A group of officers from the Puerto Rico Police began using body cameras in their patrols since yesterday afternoon.
After training in the Police Academy in Gurabo, the first 20 police officers received their equipment and certifications to immediately begin using them on their work shifts.
“It is a step forward that the Police Bureau has to take,” said the secretary of the Department of Public SafetyAlexis Torres.
“Now there are 20 comrades who go to the streets with the team and now there are 20 more comrades who are training. The goal is for everyone to have a camera,” added the official, who recalled that in addition to United States police officers, since last year federal agents have begun to use them for order of President Joe Biden.
As anticipated, the training began with police officers from the Highway Patrol Bureau.
The lieutenant sulaila martinezwho was designated as “coordinator of the Body Cameras”, reported that the first officers to be seen on the street with the cameras belong to the police units. Highway Patrols of Bayamón, San Juan, Carolina, Buchanan Highway and Caguas.
For his part, the Police Commissioner, Antonio Lopez Figueroaindicated that it was necessary for multiple reasons.
He recalled that “Sergeant Erasmo García Torres, in a vehicle intervention, he had a camera of his own and managed to record the entire intervention where unfortunately he lost his life, he was murdered. That is part of the evidence in the case brought against the defendant for the murder. He helped us clear up the case.”
The issue of body cameras recently came to public attention with the death of a minor who was shot by police in Río Piedras, where he was driving a stolen car. As there are no security cameras, the Special Investigations Bureau (NIE) will have to rely on a forensic investigation of the evidence collected at the scene.
Torres said that the process was delayed since 2018 due to the procedures required for the allocation of federal funds that were used to buy the equipment.
In general terms, López Figueroa considers that “this type of device is used so that the police assume a behavior that the people expect and, in turn, the citizen assumes a responsible behavior in the face of the intervention of the Puerto Rico Police” .
After the delivery of certifications, some of the officers made a demonstration of examples of traffic interventions in the Police Academy.
One of them was with a patrol stopping a vehicle -driven by an officer acting as a civilian- because the driver was talking on a cell phone.
The officer activated the camera since he decided to stop the car while he was still in the patrol, according to the images captured by this medium.
The video shows the officer getting out of the patrol car and reaching the intervened car. After identifying himself and telling her why he stopped her, he immediately informs the driver that she is being recorded.
The second intervention was the same, but the example included a driver who told the officer that she was talking to her mother because she had just been assaulted by her husband.
That example served to illustrate one of the cases in which the recording stops, because it is a victim of gender violence.
“Not only what the person says is going to stop the recording. It will depend on several things, including whether he is a witness or a possible victim, “explained Martínez. “The agent has the power to turn on the camera once he has found the probable cause or has been called to the scene of the intervention to attend to some evidence.”
For her part, Sergeant Arlene Colon Penawho is also an instructor of the body cameras, indicated that the regulations state that interviews with minors or confidants will not be recorded either.
However, he emphasized that, in the first instance, all officers have to have the camera on from the start of their shift and have to record any intervention, either because they observed a possible commission of a crime or because they are called to attend a complaint.
“You have to put it on record” in those circumstances, according to the regulations, Colón Peña said.
If you do not, you will have to offer explanations to your supervisors.
“If it is not due to damage, you have to see the totality of the circumstances. But there is already a mechanism that establishes the regulations to be followed because then it would fail to comply with the regulations and it would be investigated at the administrative level”, he added.
Last week, López Figueroa told the media at the General Headquarters that these videos will help provide clarity on situations that have come to light through videos posted on social networks.
“You the media have published many recordings that are made of police officers, where they use profanity, sully the reputation of the police officer and the reputation is affected, but they only use a portion of the recording. With the ‘bodycams’ the complete scene is shown, without editing”, López Figueroa said at that time.
The Police Commissioner also said that “there should not be any kind of problem” if any citizen needs access to the video of the intervention to which he was subjected or to disclose it to the media if there is a public interest.
“I have no problem with that because if there is nothing to hide, there is no reason not to give you the opportunity to see the video,” said López Figueroa.
The regulation provides that such access will require a court order, such as a subpoena.
Usually in the United States, it has been the relatives of intervened citizens who send the videos to the media, after obtaining it by court order as an interested party in the case.
The police chief assured that, if it is not part of the evidence for an investigation, the regulation provides that the video will be destroyed after drawing up a “document that documents it.”
“We already have an established protocol in the demonstrations, where there is a system that eliminates that data, it is destroyed before a log if it is not going to be used for any type of evidence. That same process will then be applied to body cameras,” said López Figueroa.
“The material that is considered evidence will be used. However, with the other material, the record will be drawn up to destroy it, ”he added.
Asked about this issue that concerns civil rights organizations, Torres said that “here there is no filing. On the contrary, here we are giving transparency to the processes to the citizen and the partner so that he can do his job. At the end of the day, each of the recordings will serve as evidence in any legal proceeding.”
According to Martínez, the officers who use the cameras have no way of personally keeping the videos when they record them, but rather the camera transfers them directly “to the cloud” and that she is the only one who has access to control it in accordance with the regulations. .
“I have control of that evidence as coordinator and it only comes out of there by order of the court through corresponding documents or by administrative investigation,” he said.
Check out the rules here: