The drug control administration has finished its body chamber program just four years after it began, according to an internal email obeyed by Propublic.
On April 2, the DEA headquarters sent an email to employees announcing that the program had been terminated cash the previous day. The DEA has not publicly announced policy change, but at the beginning of April, April, Links to pages about body chamber policies On the DEA website they broke.
The email said the agency caused the change to be “consistent” with an executive order of Trump that rescues the 2022 requirement that all federal agents of application of the law use body chambers.
But at least two other federal agencies of application of the law within the Department of Justice, the US Sheriff Service and the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, still require body chambers, according to their spokesmen. The FBI sent questions about his body policy to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
The DEA did not answer the questions about his decision to stop using the cameras, saying that the agency “does not comment on tools and techniques.” Reuters reported on change as part of a story about Budget cuts for the law application offices.
A former federal prosecutor expressed Conern Conern, the change would make the lives of DEA agents difficult.
“The vast majority of the time I saw the images of the body of the body are based on the accusations of a defense lawyer about what a policeman did,” said David Devillers, former US prosecutor of the South District of Ohio. “And I would say that 95% of the time acquits the police of irregularities.”
The Department of Justice began to demand that its federal agents use the devices in 2021 following the protests about the death of George Floyd the previous summer.
“We appreciate the addition of body used body and we appreciate the greatest transparency and guarantee that the public agents that work hard to maintain our safe and healthy communities,” said the then administrator of this moment Anne Milgram in a September 1, 2021, press release Announcing the use of cameras.
In May 2022, then President Joe Biden issued an executive order that expanded the use of body chambers to all agents of the federal law.
In January, Trump’s incoming administration terminated that order, along with almost another 100 that he considered “harmful.”
At the beginning of February, the application of immigration and customs of the United States, which is part of the National Security Department, was One of the first agencies to get rid of or their body cameras. Subsequent videos show simple clothing immigration clothing that broadcast trials without visible body cameras.
The Department of Justice wrote in a report by the Inspector General of the Inspector of 2022 that the Chambers were a “means to improve police responsibility and public confidence in the application of the law.” Studies have consistently demonstrated that departments that use body chambers experience a fall in complaints against officers, according to the Executive Investigation Forum for profitHe thought it is not clear if the fall is due to improvements in the behavior of the officers or a decrease in frivolous complaints.
“Eliminating these videos is really removing a tool that is beneficial for the practices of application of the law,” said Cameron Mcellhiney, executive director of the National Association for the supervision of the application of the law. “It is also a great teaching tool, in addition to keeping community members safe from the possible misconduct that could happen.”
The Department of Justice put a lot of money in the body’s chamber initiative. In August 2021, he granted Axon, the company that dominates the body of the body of the body, a contract of $ 30.4 million for cameras and the software to handle the evidence they created. The contract, according to Axon, remains active. But only around one sixth of the leg has paid, according to Federal Hiring Data.
The public avia more recently: the policy of the body chamber of the DEA data in December 2022. It only required that the agents use the devices when they carried out previously planned judgments or searches and seizures that required a court order. He also required that DEA officers to use his body’s chambers when they worked within the United States.
The agents had 72 hours after the end of an operation to upload their video evidence, unless there was a shooting, in which case they were told to raise the evidence of the video as soon as possible. The policy presented in detail how and by whom the evidence of the cameras should be handled in the event, the officers used the force used, and authorized the DEA to use the video evidence when investigating that it is own officers.
The DEA had planned to implement the policy in phases so that all officers throughout the country use devices when serving arrest orders or carrying out a planned trial. In his fiscal year 2025 Budget application For the Congress, the agency requested $ 15.8 million and 69 full -time employees, including five lawyers, “to allow the gradual implementation plan for the National Use DEA or cameras used in the body.”
The records obtained through the request of the Law of Freedom of Information of Citizens For Suppiannce and Ethics in Washington show that the Department of Justice of the Biden era had an ambitious plan to capture metrics and agency data on the efficiency and use of cameras for their body cameras for their bodies.
Laura Iheanachor, main lawyer of the crew, said that before the Federal Police began using body cameras, several premises Police agencies refused to participate In federal working groups because doing so would have forced its officers to eliminate their cameras.
“It is a protection measure for officers, for the public,” said Iheanachor. “And it allows the State and Federal Police to work together in harmony.”
