Stillwater Police Take Stance Against Body Cameras

The Stillwater Police Department is buckling down on its stance against body cameras.

Stillwater police held their very first citizens academy this week, during which Capt. Kyle Gibbs told attendees that the department does not have body cameras because of privacy issues, but he told News 9 Thursday that what he really meant was related cost concerns.

After the inaugural class, the Stillwater News Press released a quote from that night with a hypothetical scenario to explain the bad side of body cams from Gibbs. He was quoted, "...say there was a domestic disturbance of your next-door neighbor, and you were curious what was going on, so you went and requested the body-cam footage..." "Ethically we wouldn't want to give it, but legally we would have to."

OSU media professor Joey Senat sits on the board of FOI Oklahoma. He was upset when he read the article, saying, “It seemed to be, whether through ignorance of the law or intentionally, which I hope was not the case, to scare people into blaming the fact that they have access to government records for why the Stillwater city won’t go get body cameras.”

Gibbs says the newspaper article did not include his entire statement to the citizens academy class. He clarified to News 9, “The bigger concern for us is the cost. The privacy issues and Open Records Act are drivers for cost.”

Senat says cost is no excuse in this day and age, with smaller departments around the state and country finding ways to pay for body camera systems. “This is technology,” he says. “Making our government available to us, so to say that it simply costs too much, I think that it’s outweighed by the good that’s done.”

There are a number of national grants available for the purchase of such equipment. Still, Gibbs says there is an even higher cost for data storage, and then sifting through the footage when a request comes in adds to the manpower equation. They had to hire one full-time staff member to handle dash camera video when patrol cars got those systems in 2012. He admits, though, that private citizens are not usually the ones making those requests.

“A large majority come from subpoenas from the court, from defense attorneys and the court systems,” Gibbs says.

Senat says there are ways to reduce the amount of footage recorded at a local level through city council-enacted policies, which most departments with body cameras utilize. “If they decided that they thought it was too much of an invasion of privacy to have a body camera on when they went into a house on a domestic violence call, that is not an issue for the Open Records Act. That is a policy issue,” he points out.

“That would probably be a good starting point for discussion,” Gibbs admits. “I don’t know if that will ever happen.”

Gibbs tells News 9 they have not ruled out body cameras altogether, but they probably will not be coming to the Stillwater Police Department any time soon.