Police body camera video is a crucial part of crimefighting, but in D.C., officers are not allowed to look at video from their cameras before writing reports. which harms prosecutions, according to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves has been criticized in recent months for the way his office handles cases.
“I believe that the U.S. Attorney Graves is at fault,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.). “He’s clearly behind on prosecuting criminals. I think his priorities are in the wrong place right now.”
Graves has been defending his office, pointing out how some laws are hindering cases, like the rules that govern body camera footage for D.C. police. Graves said cases are dropped on a regular basis because the officer’s narrative does not match the video from the camera.
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“I tell everyone all the time, if you think of walking into a room, if you walk into a room and there are a bunch of people there, odds are if you try to, like an hour later, you try to remember the order in which you met the people, you’re probably going to get something wrong,” Graves said.
Graves said it’s sometimes as simple as the sequence of events in a crime. A police officer can write down that he saw it one way, but the body camera shows it actually happened another way, and then the case can’t go forward.
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office helped craft legislation to change that policy, allowing officers to review video before filing a report. The ACLU opposes that, telling News4 in a statement that allowing officers to look at the footage would be “risking biased recounts of events and compromising the integrity of these crucial documents. The adverse effects of pre-report viewing — such as biasing an officer’s memory and overreliance on the footage — outweigh any benefits”.
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“It doesn’t make much sense to me,” Graves said. “This seems like a very theoretical concern that’s getting in the way of practical problems, practical, real-world problems.”
In Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Fairfax County, officers are permitted and do look at their body worn camera video before writing reports.
The mayor’s legislation, which includes other changes to the law, is before the D.C. Council.
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