Policies and practices on use of police body cameras in Denver and Aurora fared poorly in a new scorecard issued Tuesday by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. But Colorado Springs did even worse, according to the scorecard.

The Leadership Conference, in their report, “The Illusion of Accuracy,” claimed that “by providing first-hand evidence of interactions between officers and the public, these cameras could enhance transparency, improve accountability, and foster greater public trust in local law enforcement. Yet, the promise of these cameras is not guaranteed.” Without strong departmental policies, the report said, “there is a real risk that body-worn cameras could be used in ways that threaten civil and constitutional rights and intensify the disproportionate surveillance of communities of color.”

The organization’s report included evaluations of 75 municipal and county law enforcement agencies, based on eight metrics, including departmental policies, officer discretion, privacy protections, tampering or misuse of footage and public access to footage. The criteria used in the scorecard comes from a coalition of civil rights, policy and media groups, first developed in 2015.

According to a statement released Tuesday, the jurisdictions reviewed “include the nation’s largest police departments with body-worn camera programs, programs that have received significant funding from the Department of Justice, and programs in cities that have been under scrutiny due to high-profile incidents of police violence.”

Denver’s police department received two positive marks: its publicly-available policy and that the policy spells out protections for “categories of vulnerable individuals,” such as victims of sex crimes, from being recorded without their consent. The department, however got the lowest possible ratings for limitations on retention of footage and its refusal to make footage available to citizens who file complaints. According to the report, Denver does not receive DOJ funding. 

In response, DPD spokesman Doug Schepman told Colorado Politics that the police department “believes its body-worn camera policy reflects what is best for our community. Like all Department policies, it is a living document and subject to review at any time to make it more effective.”

Aurora also didn’t do well on the report, earning a positive mark in only one of the eight areas, on having a publicly-available department policy on body cams. The department got five red marks, the lowest rating, for its limitations on retaining footage, no policy on protections against tampering or misusing footage, and its refusal to allow recorded individuals to view footage.

Colorado Springs had the worst rating among Colorado law enforcement, earning red marks on seven of the eight areas of focus, including a department policy on body cameras that isn’t readily available to the public, no prohibitions on police officers reviewing footage prior to release, and no protections against footage being tampered with or misused. 

There was one police department in the state that generally got high marks in the report: Parker, Colorado, which was rated highly on its department policy, privacy protections, public access to footage and safeguards against tampering and misuse.

The Colorado General Assembly updated state law on use of body cameras by police in 2015. The Aurora and Colorado Springs police departments did not immediately provide a response to the report.

Photo credit: Penn State University, via Creative Commons License, Flickr