The Police Department in Worcester, Mass., could serve as Exhibit A in favor of body cameras for officers.

Plagued by allegations that officers planted evidence, stole drug money and coerced sex in prostitution cases, the 450-officer department learned last November that it was facing a federal civil rights investigation like those launched in Minneapolis, Louisville, Ky., and most recently Memphis.

Elected officials in Worcester had been trying for years to put a body camera program in place, and the Police Department ran a pilot that ended in 2020. But when the city announced that the program would finally begin in earnest in February, the police unions balked, saying they wanted extra pay for wearing the recording devices.

Worcester agreed to pay each rank-and-file officer an annual stipend of $1,300, and the city’s lawyer told the City Council’s 11 members that they were “legally obligated” to approve the payments.

At the vote in May, Etel Haxhiaj, one of three councilors who opposed the stipend, said it flew in the face of the accountability people were demanding.

“I cannot imagine that when community members called for police transparency and justice, beyond body cams, that they envisioned that it would come with a reward.”

The union in Worcester was not the only police labor group looking to leverage demands for accountability. In towns and cities across the country, police unions have been asking for pay bumps for body cameras, seeking to capitalize on the growing public expectation that every encounter with the police will be recorded.

Officers in Las Vegas were among the first to win a raise that explicitly paid them to wear cameras, while unions in New York City, Seattle, Cincinnati and other cities have used body cameras as a bargaining chip in negotiations that led to significant raises. And more recently the police departments for Nassau County, N.Y., and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to $3,000 annual body camera bonuses.

“It’s literally laughable how the situation has been manipulated by the unions,” said Charles Katz, a criminologist at Arizona State University, noting that the cameras have been shown to reduce the number of misconduct complaints against officers. “Which other pieces of equipment that protect officers’ careers and lives have they charged extra for? They’re not charging extra for Kevlar vests.”

In lobbying local government officials and labor regulators, unions have argued that a pay bump compensates them for the added responsibility and loss of privacy that comes from wearing cameras. But publicly, they have said little about why officers should be paid more.

In Worcester, Officer Dan Gilbert, the union president, did not respond to attempts to reach him.

Cameras are generally activated during law enforcement operations like responding to emergency calls or conducting investigations, not during roll call or meal breaks. Some more recent models activate automatically in certain situations, such as when officers draw their guns.

        • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          Northern cities had police forces that did not originate with the Pinkertons. The structure of modern policing largely comes from the Pinkertons but the goals go back centuries more of constables and nightwatchmen

          • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “The structure of modern policing largely comes from the Pinkertons”

            “Police are what that practice (pinkertons) evolved into.”

            These points don’t disagree.

              • EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                That’s why I said striking and standing up for themselves. Slaves that weren’t meek and obedient, runaways, or people who wanted better lives.

                • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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                  1 year ago

                  Again, that’s not why police were created. An apartment building and a hotel can be similar structures without having the same purpose. Emulating a successful structure of another entity doesn’t mean you have the same purpose of that entity.