Counselors: Do any cities whose police wear body cams have a policy when an officer should write a written report of observations when his body cam has been activated? For example, an officer stops to assist another officer but does nothing but direct traffic and otherwise has no involvement in reviewing the accident scene or interacting with the persons involved at the scene. Are any city attorneys aware of mandatory standards of when a written report must or should be generated after a body cam has been activated? I would appreciate any insight. Jonathan E. Miller City Attorney City of Mustang 1501 N. Mustang Road Mustang, Oklahoma 73064 Telephone: (405) 376-7746 Facsimile: (405) 376-7721 This email is sent by the City Attorney and may contain information that is privileged or confidential. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender by reply email and delete the email and any attachments. If you are a and officer, employee or agent of the City of Mustang, you should not share this email with others. Sharing this email may result in a loss of the attorney-client privilege.

So I think there will be a little of apples vs oranges here. PD Policy should dictate when Officers should turn on their BWCs. PD Policy should dictate when a report is to be done. But in my experience there will likely be instances in which 1 Officer is required to draft a report about an incident that multiple Officers may have responded to and would have been required to activate their BWCs. There's no reason for backing Officers on those calls to write a report simply because they complied with policy an activated their BWCs. Also, there will be numerous instances in which an Officer activates his/her BWC but doesn't do a report - e.g. routine traffic stops. I fully expect that PD's will require BWC to be activated during a traffic stop (a non-consensual encounter/seizure). But absent an arrest or impoundment, if all we do is stroke out a ticket then I wouldn't expect a report to be done just because the BWC was activated. Sometimes a second Officer will back a primary on a traffic stop. My guess is that the PD Policy would require that they activate their BWC, but they won't likely generate any paper (electronic or physical paper) from the stop if all that happens is the issuance of a ticket. As a City Prosecutor, I will say that it would be *nice* if a reporting Officer on a report call noted if other Officers were present and if their BWCs were on. Whenever I have someone ask for a trial, I ask the PD to pull dash and BWC for the Officer that issued the citation as well as any Officers who might be indicated on the report as being present. I've had 1 case that comes to mind where I was talking to a supervisor about an upcoming trial and they mentioned that they remembered the call and were there - but that wasn't indicated in the report. I'm not sure if Lexipol's model policy would require that level of detail in a report (in that instance, the supervisor came over for a brief while and never went in the house but was outside with one of the suspects briefly), but it's a *nice* thing to have. Matt On Mon, Nov 1, 2021 at 3:55 PM Jon Miller <JMiller@cityofmustang.org> wrote: > Counselors: > > Do any cities whose police wear body cams have a policy when an officer > should write a written report of observations when his body cam has been > activated? For example, an officer stops to assist another officer but > does nothing but direct traffic and otherwise has no involvement in > reviewing the accident scene or interacting with the persons involved at > the scene. > > Are any city attorneys aware of mandatory standards of when a written > report must or should be generated after a body cam has been activated? > > I would appreciate any insight. > > Jonathan E. Miller > City Attorney > City of Mustang > 1501 N. Mustang Road > Mustang, Oklahoma 73064 > Telephone: (405) 376-7746 > Facsimile: (405) 376-7721 > > > This email is sent by the City Attorney and may contain information that > is privileged or confidential. If you received this email in error, please > notify the sender by reply email and delete the email and any attachments. > If you are a and officer, employee or agent of the City of Mustang, you > should not share this email with others. Sharing this email may result in > a loss of the attorney-client privilege. > > -- > Oama mailing list -- oama@lists.imla.org > To unsubscribe send an email to oama-leave@lists.imla.org >