Attorneys: Body cams would have helped lawsuit claims

The attorney for the Blooming Prairie man who accused police of roughing him up says body cams on officers would have helped bring a clearer understanding of what took place. 
Mark Stephenson, a Rochester attorney who represented Valanchie and Ashly Garcia, said body cams would have helped sort out the details much sooner in the process. The case has dragged on for almost a year and a half. 
Stephenson is a strong advocate for body cams for police because they would help weed out frivolous lawsuits. 
Body cams are wearable video camera devices worn by police officers that are fast becoming standard-issue for police across the country. The cameras promise a technological answer to complaints about racial bias and excessive force. 
With Garcia’s claims against Blooming Prairie Police and Steele County Sheriff’s Office, it came down to “totally different stories from both sides,” Stephenson said. “Body cams would have taken care of this and there would have been no questions of what happened,” he said. 
“I’ve become a real firm believer in body cams and tape recordings for police,” Stephenson said.
In the Garcia case, there were no body cams or tape recordings of what transpired at the Garcia home on April 17, 2013 when Garcia claimed police barged into his house and pinned him against the wall. Police came there to investigate a civil dispute involving a vehicle.
No law enforcement agency in Steele County at this time has body cams available. 
Joe Flynn, the attorney who defended the City of Blooming Prairie and its police chief in the Garcia case, agreed that body cams would have helped to have recordings of interactions between both sides. “The officers had one version of what happened and the complainants (Garcias) had a completely different version,” Flynn said. “It would have been helpful to have body cams in this case,” he said, adding that body cams in general would help weed out false claims against police. 
 
Issues with Body Cams
But Flynn cautioned that there are a lot of issues surrounding body cams. One of the biggest issues facing police agencies is storage of the information collected. “It takes a tremendous amount of storage,” he noted. 
Another key issue, Flynn said, is whether the data collected is public or private. The Minnesota State Legislature is currently attempting to sort out the body cam issue. 
The main question facing lawmakers is whether recordings should be generally available to the public or kept under wraps. Police groups are fighting to keep them private. 
However, open government advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota and the Minnesota Newspaper Association, which represents newspapers across the state, including the Times, say making the data private would strip body cameras’ power to keep police accountable.
No Local Use, Yet 
Blooming Prairie police chief Greg Skillestad said he has brought up the issue of body cams to the city’s police commission in the past, but nothing is currently in the works to outfit officers with them.
One of the greatest factors keeping the local police from moving ahead with body cams is cost, according to Skillestad. They range from about $400 to $2,000 per camera. 
Despite the cost, Skillestad said he thinks body cams would be useful tools for his officers. “I think they would be great because you can’t dispute video and audio,” the chief said, adding his department would definitely put body cams to use if they were available.
“It does spark my interest, but like with everything, there is a cost,” Skillestad said. 
Sheriff Lon Thiele has also looked into body cams for his deputies, but he also expressed concern about the cost. 
Thiele said it’s unfortunate that society has come to the day of needing to put every kind of recording device on law enforcement. But he agrees there is value to body cams. 
“I want to make sure my deputies and the citizens are protected with body cams,” Thiele said. “It would be an useful tool for us.”
The sheriff’s office currently has cameras mounted in all patrol vehicles. But the draw back with squad cams is that they are stationary and stay in the vehicle at all times. “A body cam would go wherever the deputy goes,” Thiele explained.
Body cams, Thiele said, would hold officers, as well as citizens, accountable for their actions. 
He foresees the sheriff’s office getting body cams within the next few years.
The Owatonna Police Department is currently exploring the possibility of getting body cams, but has not made a final decision yet, according to Capt. Eric Rethemeier.