The possibility of body-worn cameras on Somerville police officers isn’t so much working its way forward through a legislative process as it is lurching toward a decision a little backward and upside-down.
A proposal to accept a state grant for the devices comes before the City Council on Thursday with a 4-1 recommendation for rejection from the council’s Finance Committee, which met Tuesday. A related surveillance technology impact report item was discharged from the Legislative Matters Committee on June 30 without a recommendation.
What’s more, the matter arrives before the council without a public hearing demanded by an 89-resident petition and wanted by members, but with an offer by mayor Jake Wilson to schedule a special meeting for that to happen. Wilson got a $394 million spending plan for the city passed June 25 by the council, but without the money for implementing cameras, city councilor JT Scott said. That would have to be found in the coming term if they are approved.
“I didn’t want to say the words ‘ramming something through,’ but I think it’s an accurate description at this point if we’re just going to say that we’re going to discharge everything about this without recommendation so we can talk about it all in two days – before there’s been a public hearing,” councilor Jon Link said at the Finance Committee meeting. “I understand the position of the administration. However, I think that there’s a lot of information that we just haven’t properly discussed at either the Legislative Matters level or as a full council, and it just does not seem like the right thing to be doing.”
Wilson wants to accept a $231,635 state grant toward putting body-worn cameras on officers, but councilors note that the gift is dwarfed quickly by costs the city must pay upon implementation – nearly a half-million dollars annually for new equipment and a new hire to handle it and the data that results, as well as pay increases for police.
A June 25 memo by Wilson to councilors says he wants to buy equipment “in anticipation of future phased implementation,” and that he has the agreement of the Somerville Police Superior Officer Association – members of which have negotiated a pay increase already, while negotiations continue with the Somerville Police Employees Association over its own agreement and member pay increase.
The city entered budget season more than $5 million in the red.
“This has been a tremendously difficult financial year. There’s a lot of things that we sacrificed. Every department in the city made sacrifices, and I think that it’s just not the right time to commit to indefinite years and years of nearly half a million dollars a year,” said councilor Ben Wheeler, chair of the Finance Committee.
Those difficult choices are what member Emily Hardt cited also in saying she didn’t feel comfortable voting for the cameras. Link agreed: “We were told that when it comes to interventionists at schools, we don’t have two nickels to rub together. If we don’t have the money, we don’t have the money.”
Civilian oversight board
The other issue hanging over a vote Thursday is the lack of action on a civilian oversight board for police, an idea talked about in Somerville since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020. The city formed a Department of Racial and Social Justice the next year whose director, Denise Molina Capers, created a 14-member oversight task force. In 2023, that group was expected to get its “work done in six months” and make a recommendation to former mayor Katjana Ballantyne.
Capers is gone and so is her department. Wilson’s budget restructured it into a Department of Equity and Belonging.
Three councilors on Tuesday brought up the lack of oversight board, and School Committee member Andre Green chimed in via social media with a summation of the thinking: “I support body cams, but the independent oversight body needs to exist first.”
The vote seeking a positive recommendation for the cameras came from Kristen Strezo, who argued that the cameras provide transparency and, whatever members’ feeling about police, the devices are good for “our constituents and their safety and their their day-to-day lives” – but only with steps such as the civilian oversight board, which got years of discussion before the camera grant was offered five months ago.
Scott, who raised objections in April to camera-induced spending, said that as chair of the Legislative Matters Committee he felt their use was “not ready for prime time” in Somerville.
“However, if the administration would like a vote on this, I suppose they can have their vote,” Scott said.
This post was updated July 8, 2026, to correct that the current budget doesn’t include money for body-worn cameras.
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