A measure approved Tuesday requires all Montgomery County police officers in uniform or when displaying a badge or insignia to wear body cameras.
Also, the county police department will have additional reporting and review requirements when body-cam footage captures a police officer’s use of force and in certain other circumstances.
The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the legislation, which awaits County Executive Marc Elrich’s signature to become law.
County Council President Tom Hucker was the lead sponsor of the bill.
Hucker said the incident that prompted him to draft the bill happened in January 2020. A 5-year-old student at East Silver Spring Elementary School walked away from school, and was met by two county police officers who treated him aggressively.
According to body camera footage made public more than a year after the incident, the officers led the boy back to school, but also verbally harassed him and berated him. A female officer repeatedly screamed at the boy, inches from his face. A male officer placed a handcuff on the boy’s wrist in an attempt to scare him.
Hucker’s bill requires all county police officers to have body cameras, whenever they are in uniform or are displaying a badge or insignia.
The legislation also requires the professional accountability division in the county’s police department to conduct random reviews of body camera footage, including to assess:
- The employee’s compliance with legal requirements and department policy
- Their overall performance
- The consistency of written reports and the body camera recordings
It also requires the county police department’s Internal Affairs Division to review any body camera footage and report to the police chief any case related to the use of force, involving children younger than 18, a potential criminal offense, or a fatality and serious bodily injury, among other circumstances.
Lee Holland, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 — the county’s police union — told Bethesda Beat earlier this year that he supported Hucker’s bill.
Holland previously said body cameras provide “added transparency” for police officers, and the legislation also improves the logging system for accessing and redacting body camera footage, an improvement over the current system.
Currently, flash drives might be used to access and distribute that video, making it difficult to track who accessed it, Holland has said.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Hucker said it was troubling that the County Council didn’t learn about the East Silver Spring incident until roughly a year after it occurred, and didn’t see the video until after that, after Bethesda Beat reported on a lawsuit by the boy’s family against the county.
The legislation also creates more reporting requirements through the county police’s Internal Affairs Division, including monthly reports to the police chief about active cases.
The bill states that the chief must tell the County Council and the county executive about those cases within 24 hours. The chief also must tell both the council and the county executive about any case investigations that aren’t concluded within 180 days, any possible reasons for the delay, and when they might conclude.
Hucker said the East Silver Spring incident “highlighted the gaps” in the county police’s body-worn camera policy. He believes the “vast majority” of police officers would not treat a child like the footage showed in the East Silver Spring incident, but the bill is a good accountability measure to ensure that.
Steve Bohnel can be reached at steve.bohnel@moco360.media
