Recommendation to Authorize the Interim City Manager to Negotiate and Execute a Five Year Agreement with Taser International for the Acquisition, Support and Maintenance of 80 Body Worn Digital Video Cameras and a Digital Evidence Management System and Appropriate $424,752.61 from the Police Departments’ Fiscal Year (FY) 2014-15 Budget to Finance the Acquisition.  (Police 3121)
Appropriate 424,000 from the Police Department's fiscal year 20 1415 budget. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the Council, Paul Woolery, Chief Police, thank you for your time and consideration of this. As I stated in the staff report, there's obviously been a national conversation about body worn cameras. That has really picked up a head of steam after after August, after Ferguson, and continued with several other high profile incidents around the country. All the while, going back three years, we've been testing various types of cameras in anticipation that someday we would probably come before you and ask for your permission to approve them. So after everything that happened in the fall and over the winter, we had both a financial opportunity with our salary savings that we had this year and the cops money. And we thought that it would be probably the best and most appropriate time to come to you and and ask for your approval on this. I'm sure that some of you are going to have questions about the policy component of this. We are still working on a draft policy. We are well, well into that. We just have, I think, a few a few details to hammer out. And I would expect that I would be able to submit something for your review by the last meeting in July before you recessed for the for the month of August. So as a point of clarification, although I didn't stated in the staff report, if tonight I'm asking for your approval to buy the cameras and I will commit to you that I will not deploy them or put them put them out in the field until you all in the public have had a chance to review the policy . With that. If you have any questions, I'm happy to try to answer them. First of all, let me ask. Okay, wrinkles clarify. Do we have any speakers from the public on this item? No. None? No. Okay. Thank you. Comments from Council Member Ashcroft. Thank you, Mary Spencer. And I will disclose that I have spoken with both police chief Valerie and I'm interim city manager Liz Warmer Demme about this item in fact. Chief Hillary and I have had discussions going back months about body worn cameras because that's what this proposal is for. So at the outset, it said, I want to state that I do understand the national conversation and events that we read about in the news media that have contributed in part to this request. I will also hasten to say that I'm very proud of the police department that we have in Alameda. But this is still a good policy for a number of reasons, both to limit the amount of potential police violence and also to protect police from unwarranted accusations of misconduct. But that said, it is my feeling that this request for acquisition of this equipment should not have come forward to the council without a draft use policy. And we went through something similar in the last administration when the police department asked for license plate readers, which we did. And at purchasing and not quite before we purchased them, but before it was all finalized, we did hold a public forum at the library and we heard from a number of different representatives. And I don't think that we need to do quite such a full blown presentation or forum, but I do feel that it's important. This is a high profile kind of an item. And I think both the city council and the public want to know not just what are we acquiring, how are they used, under what circumstances are there circumstances where they might not be used? The ACLU has put out a white paper that I've read that, you know, has its own certain slant to it, but certainly raises some some points that are worth considering. There are other communities around the area. San Leandro, I believe, is has purchased the same type of equipment that we in Alameda are looking at. They did their use policy ahead of time while while the equipment was just being tested. San Jose is looking at purchasing body worn cameras and they are simultaneously in the process of developing their policy. And I think there are a number of things that the city council would like to know more about and the public would like to know more about and would also like to have input on. So I do appreciate the chief's offer that he would bring back a draft use policy to this council before we recess in August so that we would be able to offer input. Because I well, I do think there's an important public policy here. And I know I've spoken to the interim city manager about not wanting to see this sort of cart before the horse situation again. I but I do understand we're coming to the close of the fiscal year and there's some available money out there. At the same time, it's no secret that the fiscal year ends at the end of June. And so we've we've known this as long as we've known we wanted these cameras, but taking a more pragmatic approach. I don't want to disadvantage both the department and the city by saying, no, you can't make this purchase in this fiscal year. But in order to have my vote to move forward with this, I would need it. The this proposal conditioned on the fact that the use policy, the draft use policy comes back before the council for comment before well before the end of this fiscal year and before that before we go on recess in August and also before the use of these cameras in the field. That's all for me for now. Thank you, Mayor. The other member comments. Well. I actually have a question for the chief justice to the fore and for the public to. The policy will include not only the use of the camera as it's being deployed, but access to the. The data that the camera collects. And I was also wondering about the protection that the storage, because most of the money is for storing data. And I read in here, I think it was a cloud base storage and. What assurances do we have that they have the necessary protection of our data, that the data is not shopped to other people and that we have evidence that the data has has been maintained in that fashion, that it's ours. And Arsalan, it doesn't go to NSA or anybody else and that they can prove that it's protected. Yeah, they are. I'll see if I can get a representative from Taser to come. Back here with me in July. When I speak. I'd like to have something in writing that says We are protective and we have recourse if something happens, sure that it's their fault or not. Sure, something happens to our data. Right. I can I can tell you for a fact that there is they would not have. It's our data. They're simply holding it for us. They are not they would not be authorized to give it to anyone under any circumstance. And it would it would only be in and it would be deleted on our our retention schedule that will develop with this policy. And then the last bit is the question about public access as a matter of public records. I'm not asking you to explain what the policy is, but I'm asking you if the policy will include a Freedom of Information Act or a public I'm sorry, public records act or rule requests from either remember the public or an attorney or whoever might. Yes. That will be a component of the policy. Thank you. And Brody. Thank you, madam. A question through the chair to my colleague, Councilmember Ashcroft. So I think the chief said that he was willing to come back with a policy before the August recess and not implement or not deploy them until we had a policy. Is that satisfy your concern? Because I thought you threw in a in the fiscal year. I said that, but then I corrected it before the before the August recess. I am mindful of the fact that if a majority of us were to vote no now with the calendar year requirements and all, we probably couldn't get this purchase agreement done before the end of our fiscal year. And that would that would not be beneficial because it would you know, if we think this is beneficial equipment, it's going to we're going to have to pay for it in one fiscal year or the other. And the fact remains that there's $300,000 of available funds from the police department now. So so that was a misstatement on my part. Okay. Just just clarification that. I. Think a misstatement. So just a few quick comments. Thank you for for bringing this forward. You know, this whole issue of community police relations, I mean, this is the civil rights issue of our day and of our time. And, you know, I'm sympathetic to you as far as the timeline on developing the policy, because it has you know, this is a debate that we're having nationwide, and it's also a debate that we're having at the state level, you know, at the state level. Know there's three bills that are being talked about. You know, one is is AB 66, Dr. Weber to create statewide standards. And that's that requires so much thought and so much consideration that that bill is now turned from a one year bill into a two year bill. So at a statewide at the state level, we're struggling with the policy. We're struggling with the standards. So I understand, you know, that we don't have one yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing it. And the same thing. There's another bill, HB 65 by Assemblymember Alejo to actually pay for body cams, and that bill did not get out of appropriations. And, you know, there's a letter going around, from what I understand, you know, to appropriate $5 million. My first thought was, why don't we wait until we see if the state can help us pay for this or if, you know, the federal government could could help us pay for this. But, you know, our our bill is 1/10 of what the state is proposing. So I doubt that Alameda is going to get 10% of the funds that are allocated statewide. But the one bill that is still alive, Assemblyman Rodriguez, is AB 69 that talks about the retention of data. So those standards, as the vice mayor mentioned, I think are important. And I hope that as you develop these standards, you know, you take a look at the debate that's going on statewide. You know, they're talking about evidentiary data, you know, being retained for three years. And what a lot of this is, is evidentiary data, you know? This is why this is so important and why it's an issue that I'm supportive of. It helps keep the public safe because if there are rogue officers that are, you know, violating civil rights and violating the law, then as we've seen throughout the country, we can see that and the public can see that. And policymakers such as us can, you know, speak to you, hopefully not, but, you know, in other jurisdictions and say, you know, what's going on here. But I think it also protects the police department. And I. I did have an opportunity to attend a Taser summit on this with you. And I know Ed Treacy, our our colleague from San Leandro, who recently passed away. He presented on on behalf of San Leandro. And there was a presentation on behalf of Oakland. And Oakland said from if I remember correctly, they went with the other vendor and then they said they should have gone with with Taser. And San Leandro seemed to be happy with Taser Tasers. But now it protects the officers from from false accusations because I think there's probably more instances of false accusations of police conduct than there actually are instances of police conduct. So. This is, you know, a critical issue. I'm glad that we're taking the time to, you know, develop the policy. I'm looking forward to seeing it. But I hope that, you know, look at what's going on at the statewide level and look what's going on in other cities. And, you know, use those as guidelines for your policy because we will eventually, at the state level, come up with a set of guidelines. But if ours are more protective of civil rights and more, I think we'll be able to have those apply. But, you know, keep that in mind. And, you know, I'm I'm in favor of moving this forward today. Thank you. Amber Data. Thank you. You know, Alameda, as we all know, is one of the safest cities in the Bay Area, not just because we're an island, but because we have an effective law enforcement. And when the chief of police says that this is a certain piece of equipment that's going to make them men and women even more effective, it's going to protect them as well as the public. And, you know, I'm ready to get behind that. I understand, you know, the issues regarding the civil rights and the questions and all that. But to me, it's very practical. You know, this is going to make our our law enforcement enforcement that much more effective. You. A follow up to my. Yes, because. Thank you. Because I know you want to go there. Yes, go ahead and go that. Don't you prefer. That's okay. SCHIEFFER Larry, I also meant to ask I think this came up in one of our conversations. Does the agreement that we would be entering into you would be entering into with Taser? And by the way, Taser is the manufacturer of these body worn cameras. Does that allow you to upgrade the equipment when a new version comes out? Yes. So one of the nice features of this contract is with it, with the money that we're paying and the package that we're buying. If, as we all know in technology, what's, you know, new and hip today is obsolete. Tomorrow, if they come up with a better camera during this five year period, we will get that. We will get that camera at no additional charge. If the cameras that we have break for some reason, they will replace them. It's all it's all included in the package that I have before you. And as a follow up to what the vice mayor said about what Taser can do with our information, because this evidence, AECOM, cloud based storage is also a subsidiary of Taser. And so I would hope that it somewhere in the agreement is are the parameters of what exactly can be done, if anything, besides storage with our with our data. Yeah. Well we'll make sure and I, I don't have the, the agreement in front of me or memorize, but there's no, there's no possibility that they're going to be allowed to share this data. It's our data. They're simply holding it for us. It's military grade security. I was never in the military, but I'm going to assume that a company is largest, as Taylor as a Taser has has high security features built into their system. Numerous agencies around the country have been using them for a while. They have not had a data breach. And again, it's not one of these things where with the lpas, you know, we talked about it back then that there were I'm sorry, the license plate readers, that there were private companies, tow companies, for example, that were, you know, that were selling the records to other people for other interests , that none of that's happening. That's not we don't do that with our LPR data. And that certainly won't be the case with with the videos. Thank you. So I had questions in regards to and you had mentioned the policy coming back to the community and getting feedback and I participated as a citizen during that process. When you were doing it for the is that what you called it? Right. Do you anticipate a similar. Can you explain what you anticipate that to look like, that process? All I intend to do this time is to once we once the policy's ready for prime time, I would submit it. I'm assuming that as an item on the consent calendar for for your acceptance and put it out two or three weeks in advance. I'd even be willing to put it up on this, on the website, on the city website, in advance so that the public can read it. I have no plans to have a public meeting like I did for the license plate readers. I just would put it out for the public's consumption and your consumption before the meeting. Okay. So I would like to have I don't council members, if you'd like to weigh in on this, I thought that that was a good process. It was informal. Some people don't feel comfortable coming up here and speaking, and I would like the opportunity to be able to walk through the policy. Not at this meeting. Not at this. Meeting. So if I could offer maybe a compromise for proposition, just because we are coming up close on the August recess with, you know, a number of meetings and things to accomplish, I rather than seeing this come back to us on the consent calendar, because, I mean, obviously, someone can pull it from the consent calendar, but if that's on the regular calendar, a review of the policy, then the public and the city council can weigh in. I mean, I think if it if the the draft policy comes out in the staff report, which is what we did with the LPR, as that should give ample opportunity with the noticing requirements for us all to have that I think. I know reasonable minds can differ. I do feel like we're getting kind of saturated with extra meetings. And I would I would prefer to just keep this at a council meeting. Do we have a date, by the way, when we anticipated bringing this back? I think we talked about the three meetings in July, correct? Yep. So the last. So I would like go first. So I will want to have a conversation, want to have that opportunity with the public of council is not interested in that. I'm comfortable reaching out to one of our communities, such as a city, to hold a forum at the library on this issue if they think that there's interest by the community. My concern would be that we would not have enough conversation on this. However, that that's what that's just one issue. And so I'm not hearing any support from the council to have a meeting, which is. I just want before I move on from that. Oh, my, my only thought is, you know, however, the the chief thinks best in terms of moving along. I'm fine with that. So, I mean, it's altogether possible they might decide to do. So I attended the meeting at the library. There were quite a few people that came. I thought that there were a lot of serious questions asked and and that that it was not a waste of anyone's time. And, and to me, this is just as important. If not, I would actually submit more important than monitoring cars that come in and out of our town. I might differ somewhat there. I think this is an important purchase for the police department. I and I was at that same forum we attended at the library. There was a lot of concern over the infringement of civil liberties on the part of license plate readers because they are they can be very non discriminating, just, you know , picking up whatever traffic is driving down the street. On the other hand, we also established that there is no expectation of privacy on a public street. Another difference between these two pieces of equipment is that the ACLU you'll remember there was an ACLU attorney at the at the Library Forum on the license plate readers. And they were definitely very skeptical and mostly opposed to the whole concept of papers. Whereas the ACLU in this 12 page white paper that I read that was updated just earlier this year, actually comes out and says, we surprised ourselves by coming down on the side of something that is a form of surveillance. You know, they made a good case for why it it is both beneficial to the public and also to members of the police force. And I also I'm all for a robust a full and robust discussion. I don't understand why it can't happen at a council meeting. We certainly see in this chamber when there's something that's of a lot of interest to someone. So anyway, those are those are my thoughts. I don't know what the rest of the concern. Really is if there are no other council members that are interested in that. But that's all I'm looking for. If there's not, then I'm happy to work with another group to host and I and ask the police chief if you'd like to participate. Sure. That would be voluntary on everyone's part. But I think education, we may have an interest in answering questions on this issue. I also we now we have a speakership on this item council. Are you agreeable to having me call someone at this point? Well, we haven't we're actually still in the question yet, but ourselves. Right. Could I just hear if you could we. So I haven't finished the I mean, we did hear from. A will on your. Proposal. On this proposal of holding a. Separate member. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll leave it to the chief's discretion on how he wants to develop the policy. All right. So and I also I also want to commend the chief and our police officers for attending the county event that was in Hayward involved, that where the ACP faith leaders and community members from the county participated. Officers from across the county participated. And the issue was to improve relations between police and community members. And I really think that your appearance, their interaction with the community, absolutely important and great job. Thank you. And then in regards to this, I fully support funding this at this point. I think it is very important. I think it goes to protecting the rights of the citizens as well as protecting the officers involved. I think I, I, I do want to work on the policy, but I think that at the I think what we're seeing, this will be better quality then. But right now, what we see quite often on TV is someone's cell phone taking video. This will be better. It will serve its purpose at a higher quality. I agree. A couple of points I want to make and I don't want to delay the meeting any more than I need to, but. One thing that I want to point out to you and to the public is, you know, I mentioned in there that that one of the things that the studies have indicated around the countries that use of force complaints go down dramatically and the use of force incidents go down dramatically. I don't want to paint a false picture to the public or to you that we have a problem here right now. I respectfully think that we do not. There was a piece that was just that Michelle Olsen wrote in the Almeida, and that included a five year lookback of our calls for service, our arrests, our use of force incidents and our complaints. And, you know, we had 141 uses of force all across the spectrum from a simple control hold to a baton strike, 141 uses of force, over 13,000 arrests, less than 1%. It's not it's not a lot. So if we're fortunate enough to reduce it, which I would be all for, and I'm sure every police officer in the department would before it's going to be right. We're not talking about a large number, 141 in five years, and I hope I'm not jinxing it. But that's that's basically what we're talking about in this town. The other thing that I wanted to to point out, remember, you brought up the the state funding or the potential for state funding. I also alluded to briefly in the staff report that there is some federal money that's coming available literally at the last minute. But in our estimation, in my estimation, it will be we have a slightly better chance of winning the lottery than we do of getting that funding. Right. Yeah. One. There's 16 awards for departments our size around the country. And I mean, talk about cramming it in. We would have to get that in by June 16th. So I am very aware of how much this costs. But I actually have gotten to the point where I think we can't afford to not do it. If I can use a double negative. Member, Ashcraft. And just a question on costs. So it does seem that the majority of the cost comes from the storage of the data. Yes, that agreement and I've heard from other law enforcement professionals that Taser, because they've cornered the market, can kind of price as they as they wish. Is there any movement or are there any attempts among law enforcement agencies to get together and create their own? They're have. Yes. I'm sorry. I mean, there have been some conversations about people pooling departments, pooling their resources to share servers. I personally, I think that that might create more questions than it resolves. One of the issues is who's going to store the data and who has access to the data? Chain of evidence, chain of custody and evidence, whether it's, you know, a gun, a knife, you know, whatever whatever the item is, is very important. And that has to be completely unassailable for us to present it in court. People who some people who support us having these cameras, you know, want to make sure that we're ultimately accountable. Well, if we're the holder, if we if we are in control of that data here at the city, then that's not going to help people feel any better about, you know, who who's controlling the evidence. Will you might delete it. You might edit it. We can't do that. We can't do that. There's no there's no ability. Once that stuff is once the video has been docked and transferred to Taser, we can't edit the footage anymore. Now, we might have some situations at our my discretion or at a captain's discretion where we can delete it. Inadvertent recordings, things that are otherwise prohibited by the policy. I mean, you can imagine all kinds of accidental activations of the recording that, you know, none of us would ever want to see. And so there might be some situations where we want to delete that stuff, but there would be an audit trail, would be the request would remain indefinitely there. There's nothing nothing would be hidden in that regard. We really are trying to make it balance privacy and technology, accountability on the part of the police department and, you know , continue to instill confidence with the public. And it's it's a difficult conversation. And that's, as a member already mentioned, I mean, even at Sacramento, they're still debating it. The AB 66 has been revised five times since December. Most recently on May. 6th, you anticipate that there would be within the policy a built in review, for instance that six months or a year after. In the start of the policy review. Review of the policy. Sure. Absolutely. Come back. Absolutely. And as I mentioned, for the license plate reader policy, we we subscribe to a company called Lexa Poll that that produces the policy templates based on federal law, state law and then best practice. The federal law and state law stuff stays regardless. So if we developed a policy, everybody looked at it, agreed, hey, this is a good policy for Starting Point in August and then in October, legislation is passed that makes something law. The next day I change the policy and it's reflective of what the what the current law is the next day. But a review in regards to the community and council being able to come back, for instance, six months or a year or something like that. Do you have that in the policy? Was that. Did we do that with license plate readers? Is isn't the policy supposed to come back to after they've been in use for a certain period of time, whether it was six months or a year? What? Yeah, I think what member Chen back then had asked was that if we would do an additional audit, internal audit, because Nick Rick was, was proposing a one year audit and I believe I assured the council that I would do it at a six month and we're right at that now. I mean, as of yesterday, we're just at that six month mark because we we deployed a couple of the LPR cars in late December, I think, and then a few more and the other two in January. So we're just now coming up on that six month. Or so of that, come back to the council. So with that included, then, sure, it's six months. So that would do that for the LP. Sure, I can do that. And then this policy would have a similar. A provision within it. All right. And we do have one speaker, Carol Goldstein. Hello, Madam Chair. City Council Carol Gosling, Alameda Resident. I wasn't planning to speak and I apologize for putting my speaker speak slip in late as I don't know if any of you know this, but when the automatic license plate readers were up for a debate, I was one of the more vocal questioners of how the data was going to be collected and how it was going to be used, primarily because the owner of the license plate data usually didn't know the data was being collected, and it was rather indiscriminate collection, and the data points could be used and manipulated to track people's movements. And I would caution about drawing too much, too close a parallel between body cameras and and license plate reading. I think Councilmember Ashcraft is pretty much on the money because body cameras are mostly for the protection of the people being accosted by the police. It's unlikely that the person being filmed isn't going to know that they're being filmed because they're going to be talking to a police officer. I am concerned and I'm glad that someone addressed this by correspondence to you, that there I think there should be some sort of policy about disclosure to the public when a citizen knows they have been filmed. I'm one of those citizens. I was informed by a police officer back in February of this year that his body camera was recording us. So it wasn't until after the recording was going. But I asked him, Can I see that recording? And he said, Oh yeah, probably you can. Of course, there's no policy right now, so I don't exactly know if I'll ever be able to see that, but I think it would be important to have some sort of a citizen oversight or input position or maybe a little subcommittee or something. But I'm not sure that we really need to have the the same amount of attention given to the body camera question as was given to the automatic license plate reader debate. Thank you. Thank you. Remember already. In America. We can start discussion after this. Right. So I'd like to move recommendation of a staff report to authorize the interim city manager to negotiate and execute by the agreement, the Taser International for the acquisition, support and maintenance of 80 body worn digital video cameras, video cameras and a digital evidence management system and appropriate appropriate. $424,752.61 from the Police Department's Fiscal Year 20 1415 budget to finance the acquisition with the caveat that it's not deployed until the Council has an opportunity to review the policy and that policy be brought back by the January or July. July 21st. Last meeting in July. I'll second. I'd like to clarify is we this council approves the policy, we review it. And review and add and provide input. Okay. So we may not agree with the policy then, and it can be if if it's completely separate from council, the policy is. Typically those those policies are something that the chief does do. But I mean, I. Think, you know. He's going to want your input on it and it's a review by the Council. And and I will just add that at least from the experience with the license plate readers and I appreciate Ms. got Stones comments, I know for a fact that that the chief did incorporate our suggestions. So I would prefer that it be the Council approves the policy since we're being asked to fund it before seeing the policy or how do you address that matter? The problem is that the way the law is, is the chief of police who has the control and operation of his department. And so this is operational procedures. And as you've heard from the interim city manager and also chief, Hillary is perfectly willing understanding that this is a more controversial type of issue, that he is willing to talk. About what. The policy is and get your input. And he has in the past and probably will, of course, take your thoughts into very serious consideration. But the council doesn't does it manage and operate the police department? Of course, they're. The recourse and this is the devil's advocate position, is that if we don't like the policy, we don't fund beyond this contract. That correct? That's certainly something you could do. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? QUESTION I'm going to call the question this point, then all those in favor. I oppose abstentions. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. City Manager Communications. Is that correct? Yeah. We're at. Number seven. Oh. We actually have two different calendars. For those of you that aren't aware, the budget falls at our joint meeting after this meeting. Would you like me to save my communications for the end? No. I'm happy to save it to the end so that we can move the the substantive items ahead. Is it on the calendar? Twice. Then is it on again? No. No, it's not. It's on this. All right. So if you're planning on coming now. I will be very brief. Stick to the agenda. Thank you.