The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department will be adopting a police-worn body camera program, Mayor Francis G. Slay announced while chairing a meeting of the city’s chief fiscal body on Thursday, August 27.
When? “Hopefully sooner rather than later,” Slay said.
Using what funds? That is to be determined.
Comptroller Darlene Green introduced the matter to the agenda of the Board of Estimate & Apportionment with the suggestion that the program be funded through existing ward capital fund account balances.
Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, who supports the body camera program, argued against that source of funds, saying most of the available, unspent ward capital funds were unspent because they had just been allocated. Reed said the comptroller’s accounting of more than $30 million in available funds was inaccurate and even “irresponsible,” because she included $20 million in park bonds that the alderman can’t touch and that can’t be spent on body cameras. Reed accused the comptroller of creating a false image of aldermen as “hoarding” money that isn’t available to them.
Reed also countered that funding could come from the city’s Budget Reserve Fund or “Rainy Day Fund,” which has $14 million. Slay did not dispute that at the meeting, but a spokesperson for the mayor told The American it’s not an option. She said the budget director advises that the current balance of $14 million in reserve (2.8 percent of the city budget) is just more than half of the goal of 5 percent of the budget. Moody’s recently noted lack of sufficient reserves as a concern when downgrading the city’s credit rating.
At the meeting, Slay cut short any conversation about funding details. Slay said he would direct the city’s budget staff to find “a funding mechanism” and “hopefully sooner rather than later” the Board of E&A would be approving that expenditure.
How much of an expenditure is also in dispute. The comptroller floated a number she read in a newspaper, but it only accounted for the initial expense of the cameras. Data storage and staff to maintain the program also must be budgeted. After the meeting, a spokesperson for the mayor said first-year costs will be approximately $1.75 million with an annual cost of $750,000 to maintain the system and store the data.
No one from the police department spoke at the meeting, which Police Commissioner Sam Dotson did not attend. Slay and Reed both acknowledged that police have a bargaining agreement with the city and said that a negotiation with the St. Louis Police Officers Association is required to seal the deal.
Jeff Roorda, business agent for the city police association, said he would provide no statement to The American.
Dotson and legal advocates previously told The American that body cameras have privacy issues that must be addressed when writing policy for the program.
But the mayor, who now controls the police department through the Department of Public Safety, was clear in his support. “Body cameras can be a very important tool in assisting investigations and building public trust and transparency,” Slay said.
Green had made the same argument in her letter to Slay and Reed urging them to take up the matter as a board. She was acting on a letter from Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis City Branch of the NAACP. Pruitt, who did not attend the meeting, said the recurrence of police-involved shootings in the city and inevitable public distrust of police witness testimony made the city’s lack of police-worn body cameras an “emergency.”
Green agreed, and told the board on Thursday, “My job is to point to where we have available funds for emergencies.”
Her suggestion to raid ward capital funds did not persuade Reed. Slay – who told The American he supported the use of “unencumbered” ward capital funds – did not force a confrontation on using the ward funds. But he spoke very confident that the funding mechanism would be found.
Slay said, “We are going to find the money for body cameras.”
